Question

I want to call a Windows (7/Vista/XP only) application from google chrome or Firefox. I am thinking of making an addon to do this. I can look up the tutorials mentioned here How to make firefox or google Chrome Add-on? . But, before that I wanted to know if it is possible to call a windows application from these browsers. Is it advisable to do such a thing ?

Answer 1

On Chrome (Firefox also support npapi)

you have NPAPI (c extension) to call os directly

https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/npapi.html

call ShellExecuteEx from npapi

On Firefox

you also have this to call os command

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/XPCOM_Interface_Reference/nsIProcess

Example from above url

// create an nsILocalFile for the executable
var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"]
                     .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
file.initWithPath("c:\\myapp.exe");

// create an nsIProcess
var process = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/process/util;1"]
                        .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIProcess);
process.init(file);

// Run the process.
// If first param is true, calling thread will be blocked until
// called process terminates.
// Second and third params are used to pass command-line arguments
// to the process.
var args = ["argument1", "argument2"];
process.run(false, args, args.length);