Creating a browser plugin like Flash

Question

I would like to create a browser plugin which works LIKE flash, with embedded content from my application on the page.

How would I go about doing this? Is it doable with .net applications?

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: To clarify, I have no intention of making something EXACTLY like flash, or remotely similar. I merely wish to be able to embed my application in-browser, and let the user pass parameters or whatever.

Answer 1

Flash and Silverlight are both decent platforms for writing your own custom apps which run in the browser and display custom content. If you're familiar with .NET, then writing a Silverlight app should be pretty straightforward.

Silverlight is probably what you are looking for since it allows you to write self contained .NET apps which run inside the browser. You can pass parameters to it, or allow it to make any sort of WCF call(REST/SOAP/XML-RPC/etc) or call any javascript function on your page.

Answer 2

Be aware that if you actually want more than a handful of people to be able to use your plug-in you'll need to deal with versions for all sorts of operating systems and platforms. If it's just for something on a local office intranet you might be ok, but otherwise you'll end up needing to write Mac, Windows, Windows 64bit, Linux, Linux 64bit, iPhone, Android, etc. versions. You'll then need to take care of really complex security issues and weird bugs that people have all the time. It's not a small undertaking.

Do you want to do something that you can't already do just by using one of the existing plugins like Flash or Java?

Answer 3

For FF/Chrome etc you need NPAPI. Can't imagine doing it in .Net

For IE it's just a COM object. Theoretically you could do it in .Net

If you are not accessing any local resources (special hardware etc) on the browsers computer then you might as well just use Silverlight. Lot of samples of what Silverlight can do

Answer 4

I've been looking into this recently - you clearly have to do a lot of per-platform and per-browser work (I haven't found a magical one size fits all solution).

My application was 3d rendering, so this series was pretty useful (obviously substituting the Irrlicht stuff for your own code/library):

http://copperbit.com/?p=20

There is also a follow up article on FireFox...

Answer 5

Still "how to develop plugin like flash & Silverlight" is big question? so far not answered.