In general, object-based designates that something is based on the concept of object, it can be a theory, language, model.

In computer science, the term object-based has two different, incompatible senses:

A somehow limited version of object-oriented programming where one or more of the following restrictions applies:

there is no implicit inheritance

there is no polymorphism

only a very reduced subset of the available values are objects (typically the GUI components)

Prototype-based systems (i.e., those based on "prototype" objects which are not instances of any class)

Visual Basic is an example of a language that is object-based in the first sense of the term, JavaScript in the second.