Interact with Local PC from WebApp

Question

I'm currently working on a corporate intranet application. Part of the requirements are to have the application start a program on the users local PC (Minitab) and then have the webapp communicate with it via it's COM interface.

What are my options for doing something like this?

1. A signed Java applet and Jacob
2. ActiveX and .NET (this will only work in IE, correct?)
3. Flash? (can flash be given permission to the local PC?)
4. Silverlight???

I'm leaning towards trying the java approach (all users will have Java and flash installed) but am wondering what's the path of least resistance.

The application runs from Apache2/Python/modwsgi on Gentoo Linux. All users will be running WinXP or Win7 with Firefox or IE6/7/8.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Flash and Silverlight are non-starters for this requirement.

ActiveX will work but you are correct this is an IE only solution. If Firefox support is important then either you need to do both an ActiveX as well as a Firefox extension, or its also out of contention.

So that leaves the Java applet. If its possible to grant a Java applet the correct access to to start up another application and there is conduit you can use to communicate between them then thats it. Certainly it sounds like its the first line of enquiry you should persue.

Answer 2

you could use AIR. You just install a barebone AIR container, that loads other JavaScript/Flash content to run the actual web app, exposing AIR specific APIs to it.

greetz
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