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Active X equivalent for OS X
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Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Norman, OK
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Offline
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I'm developing web pages based around custom plug-ins developed at the company I work for. We're looking into using Active X on the windows platform to add interactivity between the plugin/web pages/operating system. We develop our plugins for the Mac also and want to make sure everything we do is cross-platform. Is there an Active X equivalent on the Mac?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: in front of the keyboard
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Oh boy....are you serious?
If you are looking to do cross-platform, use Java (JavaBeans, EJB, Servlets, Applets, JSP).
Java was purpose built for exactly what you are talking about.
Why would you even consider anything else? Especially ActiveX! I don't even think "cross-platform" is in MS's vocabulary.
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signatures are a waste of bandwidth
especially ones with political tripe in them.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
Status:
Offline
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You could also make a Netscape-style plugin. They're the standard on MacOS; even IE5/Mac can use them (not to mention Netscape/Win). IE5/Win can't, thanks to another of Microsoft's dirty tricks, but that's what the ActiveX control is for, no?
It's also theoretically possible for IE5/Mac to use ActiveX controls, if those controls are built for the Mac, but I've never actually seen one.
Of course, you could also use Java.
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You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
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Senior User
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Rochester, uk
Status:
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I could point out that .NET probably has some good integration tools with Java, enabling you to build a wrapper component... but that would just be mean.
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All words are lies. Including these ones.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Boston, MA
Status:
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Originally posted by Metareye:
<STRONG>I'm developing web pages based around custom plug-ins developed at the company I work for. We're looking into using Active X on the windows platform to add interactivity between the plugin/web pages/operating system. We develop our plugins for the Mac also and want to make sure everything we do is cross-platform. Is there an Active X equivalent on the Mac?</STRONG>
You're definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place. Microsoft used to provide an ActiveX SDK for Macintosh, but it's pretty hard to find. COM is present on the Macintosh, via Microsoft shared libraries, but it's never really been documented to outside developers, and I can't imagine that it's feature complete. If you're delivering your plugin to IE, you've got issues because there's no JavaScript -> plugin integration enabled (this has been a long-running complaint about IE).
As someone here mentioned, your best bet is to write a Java applet to do your bidding. Hopefully Apple and Microsoft are working together to make a new form of browser plug-in. Apple endowed their CFPlugIn API with COM compatibility so it'd be nice to see Microsoft enable a new type of IE Plug-in based on CFPlugIn; hopefully Netscape would pickup the notion and put it into Navigator, then it would have enough momentum to spill to iCab, Opera, OmniWeb, etc.
Anyway, go Java young man! Mac OS X has a killer Java2 runtime (but OS 9 only has JDK 1.1.8 so make sure you pick your platform).
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Senior User
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Rochester, uk
Status:
Offline
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Java is definitely the route I'd go for, but it sounds like the company has already made their mind up. Is there anything that can be done to change it?
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All words are lies. Including these ones.
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