Running COM objects within Firefox or Chrome

Question

This question has been asked many times before: How do I run COM/ActiveX control in other browsers other than Internet explorer. The answer i simply "No! Rewrite your code. It is not recommended, security issue" and so fort.

However, I am in a situation where I can not choose.

The company I work for has a webbased CRM system that we have developed ourselves. Now we want to add phone functionality to it. MakeCall, Hang Up, Answer and so on. The PBX vendor we have chosen has software installed on evry PC that allows this functionality to be called thru a COM-object.

So we have made some tests using Internet Explorer (using new ActiveXObject() ) and everything works great. However, we have a company policy that it must also work in Firefox and Chrome. So, I am searching for a solution, that I hope all of you can help me with.

How can we do this in other browsers? Can I make a plugin that wraps the COM object? Keep in mind, the only way to communicate with the PBX software is to use this COM-object. Security is not an issue as this web solution is only used in-house and we trust the software (COM-object.)

Answer 1

You can use the whole of internet explorer as a plugin in Firefox/Chrome using the IE mode. This essentially embeds IE within Firefox which then hosts the ActiveX control.

The same extension for Chrome is here.