I have a software application which is currently a win forms application using an embedded IE web browser control. The win forms application provides access to an attached credit card machine and cash drawer to the web site running in the IE web control. Its does this by creating JavaScript objects in the IE web browser control which the web applications calls to do operations such as perform a credit card swipe or open a cash drawer. Those js objects are mapped to methods in the win forms application which then interacts with the devices. Its a pretty cool solution except that the embedded IE web control lacks all of the great development tools of a standard web browser window. So…
I want to move the web application to being used in a normal web browser window (sticking with IE is fine for this client) while still having access to the credit card machine and the cash drawer. So my question is this… What solution is best or even possible?
- Active X Control – I do not really like this option
- Java Applet
- Flash
- Create an IE Extension – with an IE extension is it possible to do something like we are doing with our current solution? – Preferred option if possible
Does anyone have any experience with this or any ideas? Thank you very much for your help!
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At a previous job I worked we used Silverlight for precisely this type of purpose, we would send out SmartCards and SD cards with devices that recorded data onto them. Users would go to our website where we had an upload section which was a little Silverlight control that accessed the local SmartCard reader or drives looking for an SD card that had our folder structure. The Silverlight control would read the data and send it to a SOAP web service we had hosted in the website.
It was quite effective and easy to work with and maintain, if I had to access local devices again from a website I would definitely look at this approach.
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