What is a good way to rewrite ActiveX functionality?

Question

All of the internal web pages at the place I work were designed and built specifically for IE 6, but now they want me to research what it would take to move to Firefox and Safari and other major browsers... and ActiveX does not work in Firefox.

So what would be a good way to take what is currently the ActiveX functionality and totally scrap ActiveX and rewrite the functionality? Basically, I'm looking for suggestions on what would be a good solution to making things work on browsers on Mac?

Is it a good idea to rewrite using Java Applets or ActionScript? After doing some research, there is just no way to integrate ActiveX on a Mac so what are possible solutions to make things work on Mac?

Let me know if my explanation is unclear... I'll try to explain better.

UPDATE: an example of some ActiveX functionality:

var rp_UserSettings = null;
var xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XmlHttp");
var serverResponseGet = "";
var serverResponseSet = "";
var serverResponseErrorDesc = "";
var rpFieldInfo = null;
var results = [];

/*Retrieves the user profile xml and stores it as an XML DOM in rp_UserSettings.*/
function retrieveUserSettings(){
    var PageURL = RoamProfURL + '/getprofile' + '?today=' + escape((new Date()).toString());
    xmlhttp.Open("GET", PageURL, false);
    xmlhttp.Send();
    rp_UserSettings = xmlhttp.responseXML;
    serverResponseGet = xmlhttp.responseText;
    rp_retCode = rp_UserSettings.selectSingleNode("//returncode");
    if (rp_retCode == null){
        rp_UserSettings = null;
    }
    return ;
}

Thanks, Hristo

Answer 1

It depends on what functionality your activex provided. A lot of functions that used to need a activex now can be implemented by JavaScript and HTML5.

For mac, you have a very good HTML 5 platform of Safari.

Answer 2

@Jason has a good point here with regards to Javascript /Query and HTML5, and the fact that it really does depend on what your activex is actually doing.

If your website needs to directly interface with the client Operating System, then you need a solution that can run on the Client computer (ActiveX (Proprietary and Painful), or Java). If your website is just collecting User Data, then you can use a server side solution and your website will be browser agnostic.

You can provide a lot of functionality server side where your browser doesn't matter anymore. For example, if you chose to use ASP.NET, then you run a Windows Server and the server does all of the work regardless of the client browser.

Answer 3

Are you using ActiveX to interface with the Browser and/or OS? If not, your whole application could probably be turned into a RIA web application using JavaScript. ActionScript (Flash) may not be a good idea if you also want to target the iPad, which doesn't support Flash.

You could go with a browser (Java applet) or desktop (Java) application, but it might be overkill if it's something you can do with a web application and dynamic HTML.

I've been converting things over from legacy desktop applications to web applications, and the browser really does make for a nice, light weight GUI/client.