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I am building an internal system for a small business and one of the requested features was to be able to go in to different apps by clicking a button on a web page.

So for example when you click on the icon for Coda it will open and be useable.

This does not need to work for Windows, only on Mac OS Mountain Lion!

How could this be done? or can it not be done?

lucian.pantelimon
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Jai
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  • Should it only work with a specific browser? – matthias.p Aug 16 '12 at 15:47
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/389204/how-do-i-create-my-own-url-protocol-e-g-so It's a .net specific answer but some of the terms may be helpful. – Mike B Aug 16 '12 at 15:48
  • Do Mac apps support custom url schemes like iOS apps do? If they do, that may be a path that could be taken. – WhoaItsAFactorial Aug 16 '12 at 15:48
  • You may want to make a client application for each OS and register a URL scheme and then use that scheme for links on your website like `yourapp://something` and your application will handle that. – fardjad Aug 16 '12 at 15:52
  • You'll have to install something on the users computer. I used Wirly Wirey Web tools to do this in IE a very long time ago. – Waygood Aug 16 '12 at 15:53
  • You can register protocols. I believe this is what the GitHub for Mac app does, allowing you to clone repositories to your Mac from that repo's web page. – Martin Bean Aug 16 '12 at 16:04

2 Answers2

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Two options:

  1. If the app can be opened using a registered URL schema, you can use that. For instance, an ftp://... link opens the default FTP application, a news://... link the default news reader. You can make up your own URL schemas. An application typically needs to register itself for a certain schema for this to work.
  2. If that is not an option, you pretty much have to install a plugin in the client's browser that can do this via any mechanism it wants.
deceze
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The problem that you face here, is the way binaries and the web works. Compiled applications like cocoa apps will only work if at least their starting binaries are there. But this basically means that the user already has downloaded the binary.

Furthermore, these apps will create their own application preferences - so a downloaded version of Coda will have no license.

And if the user has downloaded you binaries, what will stop them from using your software forever? (Just apart form license problems with the authors of said software).

So, the only thing that you could do, is to present them with some kind of VNC like client that will grant them limited access to an environment that you have under control. But writing that is way out of scope for this site.

(I assume, that the application are not already installed locally, but be usable from the server).

Kai Mattern
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