I am developing a webbased business application (JS/node) that, on some client machines, needs to have access to local printers and programms. The platform on which this capabilities are needed can be assumed as Windows in all cases.
I know that natively a programm running in a browser is not allowed to do such things. So I was told to write a browser plugin using NPAPI or PPAPI. Before I dive into all this stuff. I wanted to ask if anyone knows, if this is the right way or if there is a better one.
What I want to achieve at the end is the following:
a) a website with to buttons (A + B)
b) after pressing A directly (!) printing somethin on a local printer without any other question
c) after pressing B starting (i.e.) notepad.exe
Again the question: Is a browser plugin the right way to achieve this? It would be acceptable if this would work only with one browser type.
Thanks for your help.
An NPAPI plugin is the only way to give a web page the power to launch arbitrary executables on a user’s machine, yes.
If you make such a plugin, you need to be extremely careful with security; e.g., ensuring that it can only be used from a specific, safe, domain, as well as hard-coding the binary to launch if possible so that if the domain whitelisting fails, the damage a malicious page could do will be minimal.