What is the difference between Com Addin and Activex control

Question

When I searched about them individually, both are described as same.
Could any one please explain what are they and what is the difference between them exactly.
Thanks and Regards, Uday Kiran Reddy Project Engineer Technology Infrastructure Services, Wipro Technologies ____________________________________________ Mob: [phone] | Email: [email protected]

Answer 1

Hello,
Here is what Wikipedia states for ActiveX:
ActiveX is a software framework created by Microsoft that
adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object
Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly in the context of the World
Wide Web.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-msdn1_1-0" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.19px;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;">[1]</sup> It
was introduced in 1996 and is commonly used in its Windows operating system.
In principle it is not dependent on Microsoft Windows, but in practice, most ActiveX controls require either Microsoft Windows or a Windows emulator. Most also require the client to be running on Intel x86 hardware, because they contain compiled code.<sup
class="reference" id="cite_ref-2" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.19px;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;">[2]</sup>
Many Microsoft Windows applications — including many of those from Microsoft itself, such as Internet
Explorer, Microsoft Office, Microsoft
Visual Studio, and Windows Media Player — use ActiveX controls
to build their feature-set and also encapsulate their own functionality as ActiveX controls which can then be embedded into other applications. Internet Explorer also allows the embedding of ActiveX controls in web
pages.
And for COM:
Component Object Model (COM) is a binary-interface standard
for software components introduced by Microsoft in
1993. It is used to enable inter-process communication and dynamic object creation
in a large range of programming languages. COM is the basis for several other Microsoft technologies and frameworks,
including OLE, OLE
Automation, ActiveX, COM+, DCOM,
the Windows shell, DirectX, UMDF and Windows
Runtime.
Office add-in is an assembly which implement the
IDTExtensibility2  interface (COM).