How can I get a program on a client machine to run from an ASP.NET page?

Question

I have an app that I'm trying to run on an intranet. On my machine it worked great (famous last words) but when I put it up to the server, it didn't work. As soon as I saw the "the system cannot find the specified file" error, I figured it had to be something with trying to run a program that's on a client machine.

Yes, it would be a security nightmare if any app in a browser could run an executable on a client machine. Is this any different for intranet? The few computers it would run on all have the same version of IE and .NET that it will run on, and they all have the required .exe to run.

Here's an overview of the project:

• An employee and a participant walk into a room containing a computer.
• The employee opens my web app and looks up the person's ID (this part works)
• Clicking on "record" should perform a hidden launch of an already-installed program, which begins recording.
• When finished, the employee clicks finish (or the app times out) and the file is saved.
• File gets uploaded to server.
• The employees lack technical experience, so my objective is to pretty much have a website for them to go to where there is little more than a box to get the participant ID and two giant "RECORD" and "STOP" buttons

Can anyone help me out on how to do this (or at least let me know it's not feasible)?

Answer 1

One idea: You can register a Protocol handler to launch your app with the required parameters.