Entry

Can anyone tell me how to open an Office application(ie powerpoint) from a web page

Apr 6th, 2008 20:08
ha mo, Dave Clark, Jean-Bernard Valentaten, Colin Fraser, Mandy Anderson,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     Note that changes in browser security over the last few years 
have now made it so that Internet-based web pages are not allowed to 
access the local system in that manner.  In an intranet envrionment, 
IE's JScript still has the ability to do such things.
Take care,
Dave Clark
www.DaveClarkConsulting.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, I'm not exactly a friend of Microsofts' vulnerability to attacks 
through such methods, but the question was how it could be done and 
not 
why it shouldn't be done ;)
So here's the answer:
There are two ways. The first one is pretty easy and requires, that 
you 
modify IE's application-linking. It should be enough to open the 
Extras/Internet Options menue and grant IE access to Office 
applications. So whenever you click a link that point to an office 
document, it'll be opened. Of course you can do this with machines 
that 
you can logon to *g*
The second possibility, won't work in pure javascript, but only with 
JScript (Microsofts version of js). JScript allows you to create 
objects that are related to the machine (e.g. office apps). Every 
prtogramm, that registers itself in the registry (or any .dll etc.) 
can 
be accessed via the ActiveX-object.
For further details you might want to look up 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-
us/vccore/html/_core_How_Do_I_Script_an_ActiveX_Control_on_a_Web_Page.3
f
.asp
But you need to keep in mind, that this will only work on MS Windows 
machines using IE5 or above, if ActiveX-Controls are enabled!!
HTH,
Jean
Colin Fraser wrote:
> What do you want to do? Put a virus onto someone's computer? Even in 
> an Intranet, that is a very foolish thing to try to do. It does not 
> matter whether YOUR intentions are honourable or not, there are many 
> people out there who would wreck anyone's system, just for fun, or 
to 
> see if they can do it. Most people's anti-virus strategy has, as one 
> cornerstone, the ability to refuse to allow anyone to access 
> Microsoft applications through a web page, if indeed it can be done 
> using Javascript. Certainly mine is and so does everyone else in my 
> circle of friends and aquaintances. 
>
> I have noticed over the years that among my students, many of them
> become increasingly agitated when I give my anti-virus strategy 
> lecture, mainly because they have not considered just how vulnerable 
> they really are. Hopefully most of them go home and change the 
> configuration of Outlook, or maybe use something other than Outlook 
> and IE.   
>
> Eventually, this strategy will extend to any application that uses
> templates and/or macros, even non-Microsoft applications are open to 
> the same forms of virus attack. Please, this is not an anti-
Microsoft 
> rant, it is just they are the biggest so their products are the most 
> readily available for experimenting on and therefore the most widely 
> attacked products. Agreed Microsoft's insistence on trying to link 
> everything into a seamless application like Office and making it 
> accessible to another application like Outlook does not help this 
> situation any.
> However, for the moment, as long as the user can deny anyone direct
> access to their computer via firewalls, or application 
configurations,
> then chances are they can mostly protect against viruses. 
>
> What you want to do sounds great and I will accept your enquiry as
> genuine, but reality needs get in the way. As an alternative, give 
the
> user the opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to look 
at 
> a download from your site, even if it is for an Intranet. People who 
> need look at your *.pps file will do so, anyone who does not need to 
> probably wont bother, whether Intranet or WWW. 
>
> Good luck.
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