I want to be able to send a stream of data from a user computer to a web-service. That should not be too hard - I would use an application written in dot-net that resides on a user's Windows computer.
However, the tricky part is that the stream-of-data should only be sent (by the app) when the user clicks on a button or a link in a WEB PAGE that is open in his browser. The app itself would be minimized in the system tray. And he should be able to stop the stream by clicking on a stop-button (or link) in that web page..
So I found some info on stackoverflow that says that you can put a link in your page, something like: [a href='alert:"Hello World" ' ] and if you register your application (in this example the app would be called "alert.exe") in the registry, then when the user clicks on the link, he will cause the application to start, and to receive "Hello World" as a parameter.
Anyway, there are complications in my case. I want to be able to tell the application when to start sending data, and when to stop sending data, without starting new instances of the application. If the user clicks START, and the app is already open, I don't want it to open again. I do want a message to go saying "start sending" and if the user clicks on a STOP button (or link) to say "stop sending". The user might click on these web-page buttons several times in a session, and I don't want to close and reopen the program each time.
So a couple of questions:
Am I taking the right approach? Would "plug-ins" be a better idea?
If I am taking the correct approach, is there some way to send commands from a web page to an application?
Is it safe to have my app modify the registry of user computers?
If so, is there a set of commands for doing that?
Is the registry supported by Windows 7, Windows 8, etc? I know it is not supported on a Mac.
Thanks in advance.
LL
P.S. (the info on launching apps from your browser was at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/aa767914%28v=vs.85%29.aspx).