CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjavascriptshell
Jai
Jai

Reputation: 2204

Opening a Mac OS application from a webpage

I am building an internal system for a small business and one of the requested features was to be able to go in to different apps by clicking a button on a web page.

So for example when you click on the icon for Coda it will open and be useable.

This does not need to work for Windows, only on Mac OS Mountain Lion!

How could this be done? or can it not be done?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 138

Answers (2)

Kai Mattern
Kai Mattern

Reputation: 3085

The problem that you face here, is the way binaries and the web works. Compiled applications like cocoa apps will only work if at least their starting binaries are there. But this basically means that the user already has downloaded the binary.

Furthermore, these apps will create their own application preferences - so a downloaded version of Coda will have no license.

And if the user has downloaded you binaries, what will stop them from using your software forever? (Just apart form license problems with the authors of said software).

So, the only thing that you could do, is to present them with some kind of VNC like client that will grant them limited access to an environment that you have under control. But writing that is way out of scope for this site.

(I assume, that the application are not already installed locally, but be usable from the server).

Upvotes: 0

deceze
deceze

Reputation: 522382

Two options:

  1. If the app can be opened using a registered URL schema, you can use that. For instance, an ftp://... link opens the default FTP application, a news://... link the default news reader. You can make up your own URL schemas. An application typically needs to register itself for a certain schema for this to work.
  2. If that is not an option, you pretty much have to install a plugin in the client's browser that can do this via any mechanism it wants.

Upvotes: 1

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