How can I detect if an ActiveX control is loaded?

Question

I would like to integrate the Aurigma image uploader (http://www.aurigma.com/Products/ImageUploader/) on a website.

On Internet Explorer the control is an ActiveX control which issues a security prompt prior to the first installation.

To give the user instructions about how to react to this security warning I'd like to display an information window. I want to display this window only the control is not loaded.

  if (controlIsNotLoaded()) {
    doSomething()
  }

How can I do that?

I'd strongly recommend using a Flash uploader (with HTML backup) in preference to custom ActiveX controls. User acceptance is much, much higher and you won't be asking people to compromise security by trusting a new third-party plugin. Aurigma certainly has had multiple vulnerabilities in the past; there's no way I'd let it run on my machine. Also there is no built-in HTML fallback so you could only offer it as a optional extra upload mechanism. — bobince, Jan 29 '10 at 16:57
@bobince: Thanks for the advice. I'd be much happier to use a flash based uploader. Is there one that you can recommend? — Silvan Mühlemann, Jan 29 '10 at 20:09
Some suggestions here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/207298/what-is-the-best-multiple-file-javascript-flash-file-uploader — bobince, Jan 29 '10 at 22:06

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 29 '10 at 16:26

Assuming you have the id of the object tag (if it is coming from that) then test for the object attribute of the element against null.

function controlNotLoaded()
{
     var obj = document.getElementById("controlId");
     return (obj.object == null);
}

If you are using new ActiveXObject then it will throw an exception. Of course this will only tell you if the control isn't able to be created, not necessarily why.

How can I detect if an ActiveX control is loaded?

1 Answers1