Thinking Inside-out of the Browser

Jim Lambert jiml at netrin.com
Sun Mar 16 01:12:00 EST 2003


<it might be possible to provide hooks for Microsoft's IE object >

This relates to the question Bradley Borch recently asked, "Does Rev support
ActiveX controls? " The answer is no. As Jan Schenkel once wrote, "one of
the key things should be to avoid the ActiveX nightmare and keep things as
open and portable amongst platforms as possible."

Macromedia's Director provides half-*ssed support of ActiveX on Windows.
I've sucessfully embedded IE, RealPlayer and WindowsMediaPlayer this way.
There are 3rd-party XTRAs (kinda like our XCMDs) that let you embed a
browser into Win or Mac Director EXEs. Some clever coder could probably
write a Rev external that acted as a shim between Rev and ActiveX controls.
Of course, your app would then be Windows, but if that's all you need...

If Rev's HTML renderer were just a teensy bit more compliant it'd be fine
for displaying simple webpages that had to do double duty - say, within a
Rev app and on a site. That'd work on any platform and be somewhat like a
basic browser within Rev.

Frankly, I'd rather see Rev inside a browser a la shockwave or flash.

Jim Lambert




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