How can you tell if a user choose not to install a plug in?

Question

Hi all,

I am not sure the user is going to install the plug in. They can choose not to install. I need to know information like, install complete, or the user choose not to install. Any ideas?

Thanks, Grae

Answer 1

More context would be helpful in answering your question.

That said, if there's a particular plugin that you have in mind, you can do a post-install check* of simply trying to instantiate the object. This article has a pretty good description of what to do, but if you only care about IE and ActiveX plugins, then something like this should work well enough (untested):

function testPlugin(name)
{
    if (ActiveXObject)
    {
        try
        {
            return !!(new ActiveXObject(name));
        }
        catch (err) {}
    }
    return false;
}
​

and you could use that function to test whether or not, say, QuickTime is installed:

testPlugin('QuickTime.QuickTime');

---

*This will actually work at any time, not just after a possible plugin install