Is the website able to determine if a particular IE add on has been installed or not?
How do you have the web page detect the IE add on?
A:
No doubt you can detect most through JavaScript; it'd be addon-specific.
Steve
2010-09-12 19:55:52
How do you do it? I want to detect if the user has installed my add on.
K001
2010-09-12 20:06:47
@mhambra's answer covers this.
Steve
2010-09-13 12:48:35
+1
A:
In general, no; however it depends on what the add-on does. If it modifies the web page in some way (e.g. removing ads) then it should be possible to use Javascript to detect if the current page has been modified.
DisgruntledGoat
2010-09-12 19:56:00
+1
A:
If the addon is available via Javascript/ActiveX interface, its absense may be checked by catching an exception on calling some (missing) addon's function.
This way, checking for few common addons leads to nice browser's fingerprinting method. Refer to: http://www.informatica64.com/Wbfingerprinting/
mhambra
2010-09-12 20:07:28
A:
In IE just expose an Active X control from your add-on, and then instantiate it using new ActiveXControl() inside a Javascript try {} block. If it succeeds, your extension is installed. If it fails, probably not. You can even expose a .version() method to get the version of the control.
jeffamaphone
2010-09-13 20:46:55