views:

132

answers:

3

We have a certain application installed on a single machine. I would like to enable/disable a button based on the existence of this application. Is there a way to check for its existence from asp.net?

the app is currently on an XP machine, but want to code for Win7 as well. VS2008 3.51. Asp.net

A: 

Yes - Only If the application which you want to detect is a plugin or can send its presence using the browser's User Agent header.

Ramesh
A: 

The only way to achieve this is through the use of ActiveX controls to check if there is a program already installed. The downside of this is that the user also needs to install the ActiveX control and that it only works in Internet Explorer.

ASP .net isn't able to detect this because it runs on the server, detecting if the user has a program installed needs to be executed from the client.

James
+2  A: 

Have your client side application manually create a cookie so when someone open's the web browser and goes to the target page/site you can detect if said cookie exists.

EXAMPLE OF COOKIE & CONTENTS

FILENAME: [email protected]
FILE CONTENTS:
__utma
10677928.1548890762.1196874704.1196874704.11968747 04.1
sub.domain.com/
1600
3656200576
30045444
3904425472
29898593
*
used2could
dang! i lost a +1 after i made a text change to my answer, no fun.
used2could