Can a plugin access the file system?

[Richard Lund]

Hi,

my company may need to create a Firefox addin/plugin/extension, and I'd
like to check the possibilities before I spend months learning the
process...

The main task for the plugin is to access the file system (Windows, Mac
and Linux), check if a file exists and if it has the correct version and
(if the file is not there or old) to either copy files from the internet
directly into the correct folder or to direct the user to a page with
our installer.

I take it that giving write access to the file system is a high security
risk, so there's a good chance we'll have to give up on that, but
reading a file or testing the existence of a file might be possible.

Can someone tell me if this IS possible or not?

Thanks!

[John J Barton]

For extension of Firefox this IS possible. That is one of the reasons
that FF3 has much work on security of extensions.

John