Are Active X for asp.net outdated? What other options do I have?

Question

I have a ASP.NET website. On one of my webforms/page (.aspx), I need to retrieve a value via HttpWebRequest. Due to high traffic and tying up ASP.NET's resources, I do not want to run this on my web server. I would like to create a WinForms/Active X program that can retrieve this value (retrieved value from HttpWebRequest) and place it accordingly in the client's webpage (.aspx) -- more specifically, a textbox on the webpage.

Are Active X controls still in existence for Visual Studio 2008? If Active X controls cannot be created to do said task, what are my other options?

If still possible, Links/Examples for creating some type of program in Visual Studio 2008?

Answer 1

Use AJAX.

Answer 2

ActiveX only works, and has only ever worked, on IE. You can still use it, but almost no one does any more because other tools that are safer and more widely supported like flash, silverlight, or even plain javascript have evolved to fill that space.

In this case, if the http request is going back to your same domain that served up your page you can do the entire thing via an xmlhttprequest in javascript, and tools like jQuery can make this easier. If you're going to a different domain, you should try flash or silverlight instead, as the browser will probably not allow the javascript.