Accessing Windows application from Web application?

its_faiz

I have a Windows/Desktop Shell application developed in VB6. This
Shell application provides access to other applications that user can
run from within the Shell.

Now I want to convert the Shell application into a web application.
Can the web application call other Windows/Desktop applications
whether these are installed on either server or client side? As far as
I know about web based applications, it does not provide such
functionality due to security constraints. If that is true, what are
other alternates to this? One option may be to use Windows terminal
services etc…

Any comments on this would be highly appreciated.

Regards,

MFUK1

Jul 9 '08 #1

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Mark Rae [MVP]

<it******@yahoo.comwrote in message
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Can the web application call other Windows/Desktop applications
whether these are installed on either server or client side?

A web app can call installed apps on the webserver but, of course, they will
run on the webserver. If they require user interaction, there will be no-one
there to respond to dialogs etc which can cause the web app to hang.

As you correctly state, for reasons of security a web application cannot (by
default) access anything (hardware or software) on the client machine
directly. This is by design. All modern browsers are written specifically to
prevent this. (There are certain exceptions e.g. cookies which can write to
the client machine without user intervention.)

If that is true, what are other alternates to this?

There are certain things you can do involving ActiveX, but I don't recommend
them as they will force you to ramp the browser security right down, and
will restrict any solution to IE.

Also, it's important to remember that a web browser / application is not a
panacea. There are certain tasks for which a web browser is totally unsuited
and, it seems to me at least, a Windows Desktop Shell is a great example of
one...
--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

Jul 9 '08 #2

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