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I'm architecting one solution that needs to access one specific hardware (I already have the dll to access this hardware developed in C#). My question is, can I develop one web application, and develop some plugin to web browser to access this dll in the client machine? The idea is: - Develop web system (client side and server side). - Create plugin to Firefox or chrome, that will call the dll into client machine. - Communicate my web system with dll into client machine through the plugin?

Someone can tell me if is that possible? If so, there's any starter point?

Appreciate for any help.

Ricardo Silva
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  • You would need to write an NPAPI plugin to accomplish that. It's painful. It's either C or C++. A framework called Firebreath *really* helps by taking care of all of the xplat stuff. That will work fore Firefox - Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plugins in extensions, so I'd say you are out of luck there. – vcsjones Mar 27 '15 at 20:05

3 Answers3

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Give this a look, it uses Silverlight 4 to get system info from registry.

You could give Custom ActiveX a try as well (installing IETab in mozilla and chrome helps to run activex controls).

GMaiolo
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You will need to create an ActiveX control to achieve this. Read more about Active X here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveX

Principally, web browsers can execute / control active x controls which in turn can communicate to hardware on the client machine.

Active X controls work seamlessly on Internet Explorer. There are workaround for other browsers. This link should help http://www.tothepc.com/archives/enable-activex-controls-chrome-firefox-ie/

Praveen Paulose
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  • I read that ActiveX is obsolete. There's no other way to achieve this? There's no way to develop firefox/chrome specific plugins to do this? – Ricardo Silva Mar 28 '15 at 01:55
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I am developing a solution to do silent printing from browser. I have found a lot of possible solutions like using a web based solution (as Google Cloud Print), browser extensions/plugins, and finally using custom protocols in browser and linking them to an application developed in any desktop programming language, which can access to resources from your computer.

Check an example here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/37601807/5373542

And the source here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/aa767914

Fabrizio Valencia
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