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Berenice Pretlow

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Aug 2, 2024, 7:45:55 PM8/2/24

to siacondocha

It really depends on how the plugin works. Is this Windows 10? Have you tried adding a website exclusion (global settings) for 127.0.0.1? Sometimes these plugins communicate with the browser over loopback. Is this a cloud service or a local address the browser is connecting to? In the same exclusion place, you can add the IP of the intranet address. That will take web protection/control out of the equation for that site.

It's pretty low risk. It would only prevent a file being served from a local "web server" process over HTTP being scanned before hitting the browser. Assuming the file being served wasn't coming from an excluded location the web server process wouldn't have been able to read the file to serve it as real-time scanning would have blocked it. Hard to say if it would help in this scenario without knowing how the software works and what the issue is,

FireBreath has a WebView library that uses the IE activex control to embed a web browser inside a FireBreath plugin (which acts as an ActiveX Control on IE). You should be able to adapt it, assuming you're using C++.

Google searches are leading me down a bunch of dead ends with this one.
I am developing an Excel add-in in VBA, and part of it involves the use of the WebBrowser control to display a (known) webpage inside a form and access its DOM components.

Unfortunately, this leaves me at the whim of the user's version of Internet Explorer.
For our actual webpages, we can use Chrome Frame support to allow IE users to see the page in the way we intend without worrying about their browser version, but the WebBrowser control does not see the browser plugins.

I have taken a look at WebKit.NET and GeckoFX.They sort of work, but unless I am completely missing something, they don't seem to have Javascript or CSS engines in them at all. Or (in the case of GeckoFX), they are using old engines. That makes them useless.

Is there any ActiveX control that I can embed in a VBA form which works like the WebBrowser control (with a similar-if-not-identical API), uses a different rendering engine that keeps up with the latest version of Mozilla/Chrome/Opera, and still supports Javascript and CSS correctly?

EDITED AGAIN: I found out from one answer below that I was looking at an outdated version of GeckoFX, but the newest version looks promising. But now I have a new related question: How do I include GeckoFX in VBA? Windows does not allow me to register it as a COM object. Do I have to build it myself from source somehow? Or what?

The Mozilla ActiveX Control would fit the bill, but that seems to be dead. (It lived on in Mozilla Prism, now Chromeless, but that doesn't have a binary download. And you can apparently build it yourself from the XULRunner source, but that's probably not straightforward.)

In other words: Use the IE WebBrowser control, because it is guaranteed to be installed in some version or another, and either specify a minimum version of IE (I suggest IE6 which everyone should have) and cope with the differences by detecting the version and working around the differences from VBA.

I read that early builds of Chrome supported ActiveX, but was later restricted to certain MIME types (for support for say Windows Media Player). I then read Google was going to enable ActiveX strictly for the Korean market. How do I (re)enable this in Chrome?

Meadroid do this because they have ActiveX controls which they have written and they want them to be able to work in any browser, and they explicitly mention Chrome in the list of supported browsers for enabling ActiveX with this.

I've not used either of these personally, but they look like they'll do what you want. I'd be interested to hear if they work out for you, as I know of other people who want to be able to use IEtab in Chrome :)

anyone who says activex is less secure then NPAPI is crazy. They both allow the exact same access. Yes I've written both. The only reason people think activeX is insecure is because 10+ years ago IE had default settings that allowed a remote site to auto download the plugin.

This could be pretty ugly, but doesn't Chrome use the NPAPI for plugins like Safari? In that case, you could write a wrapper plugin with the NPAPI that made the appropriate ActiveX creation and calls to run the plugin. If you do a lot of scripting against those plugins, you might have to be a bit of work to proxy those calls through to the wrapped ActiveX control.

I'm not an expert but it sounds to me that this is something you could only do if you built the browser yourself - ie, not something done in a web page. I'm not sure that the sources for Chrome are publicly available (I think they are though), but the sources are what you'd probably need to change for this.

Google Chrome comes with an ActiveX shim, as part of its default plugin array. So Google Chrome features at least partial support for ActiveX controls (as do many non-Internet Explorer browsers). I can't find information as to whether or not this includes support for ActiveX security certificates or the like, nor if/where such plugins can be controlled, within the browser.

The plugin includes the ability for 64-bit versions of Opus to use both 32-bit and 64-bit ActiveX viewers. For example, this enables 64-bit users to view PDF and Flash files within the Opus viewer pane, even though Adobe have not produced 64-bit versions of their components.

If you chose the Brava viewer then you have to configure it before it will work in Opus. Launch it via the Free DWG Viewer icon its installer placed on your desktop, then select Options -> Set as Default Viewer from its menu.

Provided you have Internet Explorer 9 or above, you can view .SVG files in the Opus viewer panel. From Opus 10.0.2.1 onwards, .SVG is automatically assigned to the ActiveX plugin's "Internet Explorer" line. With earlier versions you had to assign it manually:

Alternatively, Caminova's DjVu Browser Plug-in will also work in Opus. Unlike the preview handler, if you use the browser plug-in you will need to configure Opus to use it by adding .djvu to the Generic ActiveX (32-bit) line in the ActiveX plugin's config. See the OpenOffice or AutoCAD guides above for help with that part.

The first option seems a bit nicer as you don't have to tell Opus to use it and it scrolls documents in a better way. That said, the second option has some features that the preview handler doesn't, e.g. a ruler to measure distances, options to rotate pages...

Quick View Plus (QVP) is a product, made by Avantstar, which can view hundreds of file formats without the need for any additional software. For example, it can display Microsoft Word or Corel Word Perfect documents without having either program installed.

Simply installing Quick View Plus 11 Standard (or above) will add its viewing abilities to Directory Opus if you are on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or above. (Windows XP users can still benefit, with an extra step. See below.)

(Thanks to Michael Kenward, Jon Potter, Plunder and Avantstar themselves for their help discovering the info above. Thanks also to Ron Hirsch whose quest for a way to view Word Perfect files in 64-bit Opus led us here.)

Version 3.1.0.20 (10th January 2012):

Included with Directory Opus 10.0.3.0.
Fix for not being able to delete/rename PDF files open in the viewer with some PDF software installed. It wasn't our fault but we can work around it. (The ActiveX plugin now forces all .PDF preview handlers to open temporary copies, after discovering that Adobe's preview handler wasn't the only one which incorrectly locks files while displaying them.)

Version 3.1.0.14 (21th September 2009):

Included with Directory Opus 9.1.3.5.
Added workaround for Microsoft preview handlers that have identical names. It's now clear which is which.
Added a hardcoded list of default preview handler associations to use as a fallback when no association exists in the registry. (Example 1: Uninstalling the FoxIt preview handler does not re-assign .PDF to the Adobe preview handler. Example 2: On a vanilla Windows 7 install there is no .EML filetype but there is an Email preview handler which works fine if the plugin knows to use it.)
Plugin configuration dialog now opens a bit faster on Windows 7 x64.
Fixed using Microsoft Office itself (not the preview handlers) to view documents on Windows 7 x64.
The Open Office file types are now viewed via an embedded Internet Explorer, by default, as this works better with OpenOffice 3.
The default configuration now recognises Open Office documents (.ODT), spreadsheets (.ODS), graphics (.ODG) and presentations (.ODP).
Internet Explorer and the Windows Email preview handlers can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel without first clicking on them. (Unfortunately, this has to be done by giving them the focus when you scroll.)
Adobe PDF preview handler no longer takes the focus when scrolling with the mouse wheel.
Added workaround for Adobe PDF preview handler on Vista x64. (Different to the previous workaround for Windows 7 x64.)
Added workaround for Adobe PDF preview handler locking files when they are viewed.
Added workaround for Adobe PDF preview handler not responding to the keyboard after scrolling with the mouse wheel.
Added workaround for Adobe PDF preview handler not allowing you to tab-cycle to or from it.
Added workaround for Adobe PDF preview handler not drawing pages if you scrolled rapidly using the keyboard.

Version 3.1.0.12 (8th September 2009):

Included with Directory Opus 9.1.3.4.
Added workaround for "Adobe PDF for Vista" preview handler not working under x64 due to Adobe registering it incorrectly.
Added workaround for "Adobe PDF for Vista" preview handler rendering blank pages sometimes when scrolled with the mousewheel.
"Adobe PDF for Vista" preview handler is now enabled by default, if installed, as it's the only Adobe PDF viewer applet that works properly on Windows 7 x64 and it doesn't depend on the "Display PDF in browser" setting of Adobe Reader. People who preferred Adobe Reader can still configure the plugin to use it instead of the Adobe PDF preview handler if they want to.
Added .MP4 to default Generic ActiveX extensions.