ActiveX Control always working on my machine - unp

Question

I have a question about my ActiveX control not always working in IE on other machines.

Context: I'm working on an internal app for my company. It is designed to be a standalone web-page config tool for viewing a static customized version of our web app. The user may select the colors, images, and other settings they would like to see, and these will be present in the static mockup/preview version on their machine when they click a button.

Implementation: my javascript file creates a filesystem/activex object that essentially creates a temporary javascript file to which a list of values are written. Then when the user previews the configuration, the javascript file is located and values are loaded dynamically into the dom, etc etc. Naturally this functionality only works in Internet Explorer and is shady at best, but is my only way of implementing a purely zero configuration, client-side dynamic webapp.

Problem: When I test out my script, Internet Explorer prompts me twice about ActiveX controls and I say "yes" to them and the ActiveX functions work. I do this every single time I open my page. But sometimes when I send the file to another person so they can use it, they don't get the notifications so it doesn't work. However sometimes they do get notifications and it does work! I am using default security settings for IE so there should be no difference between my settings and theirs.

Could this be related to my user permissions vs theirs, or the fact that the files are read-only (because they are coming from source control and are also being made read-only when put on the shared drive.) or unknown dark Microsoft forces beyond human comprehension?

Thanks, Josh

Answer 1

I believe you may want to create an HTA (HTML Application) instead of a web page. Writing HTA's gives you more privileges as far as ActiveX objects are concerned. Check out this page from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496(v=vs.85).aspx.

To answer your question about privileges, I believe that some of your coworkers' IE settings probably prevent web pages from using ActiveX objects. Your settings may be such that you are prompted whenever ActiveX object are about to be created.