Are there alternatives for ActiveX In Microsoft Edge?

Question

Microsoft has announced the Edge browser, which does not support ActiveX.

I have an app that needs to get info from the Windows registry, so I have some questions about alternatives to ActiveX:

1. Is there a way to communicate with a native app (that can read from the Windows registry) from Edge or something similar (like native messaging in Chrome)?

2. Is there a way to directly access the Windows registry from Edge, Javascript, or the like?

Answer 1

Currently I see no way for you to access the registry from a web application running in MS Edge. If you just need to save information there are different alternatives you can chose from to enable similar capabilities.

1. You could use storage options available with HTML/JS like webStorage or indexedDB. They are both available in all modern browsers and could be used to to save data on the client.

2. If the application supposed to be available just on Windows 10 you might think about builing a hosted web app (http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/07/06/project-westminster-in-a-nutshell/) This technology eables you to access some features of the Windows operating system, but not the registry.

If your app is highly dependent on ActiveX and the Windows registry you can still use Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 10.

Answer 2

Few days before my answer, Microsoft just introduced Native-messaging between Edge extensions & Native apps on their online document:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/guides/native-messaging

which might afford what you need.