Alternatives To Java Applet To Launch Microsoft Office Applications

In our web application, we used to use a Java applet to invoke MS. Office applications e.g. Word to open, edit, and save back a file to the server. Google Chrome will no longer sup

Solution 1:

From what I'm understanding is you want a way to open an a file using a specific application (MS Word?) and then when the user saves the file it is automatically updated to the server?

You can achieve this by storing the file as a temporary file and automatically checking if the file has changed every few seconds.

This can be achieved using a real-time javascript framework such as NodeJS. The application launch could be met using the following: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914(VS.85).aspx

Or perhaps a direct <a href="file://C:/path/to/temp/word.docx">Word</a> would work.

Solution 2:

I know of no way to allow a web application launching local files / programs without some intervention by the user. He will as far as I know always need to accept some kind of plugin or will be prompted for some action.

There is one technique I like very much and it is relatively "lightweight": you could give your users the opportunity to either invoke Word manually or setup their computer to support a certain url handler. You can find a description of url handlers here: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914%28v=vs.85%29.aspx. After this is set up your application could offer a link similar to msword://file0815.doc. You only need a small programm on the computer to react on this, the same program could combine the installer and setup function (you need some registry entries).

I have seen this in combination with DMS applications and it works quite well, uTorrent does the same for torrent downloads. Internet Explorer and Chrome support this for sure, and I am sure Firefox will too.