I’m designing a system that will use Vaadin for the main UI. We have the need to present users with an ActiveX control that works in conjunction with a client-side USB device. What is the suggested method of serving the ActiveX resource to the client?
I’ve examined the Vaadin Demo Samples, the Book of Vaadin, and this forum and think I understand the following:
It would be possible to treat the DLLs and several other files of the ActiveX component as external resources (accessible directly via url) and use the ExternalResource to load/embed them. This is similar to the embedded Flash video in the Demo Samples. Is there another way? What would be best?
My goal is to keep these resources as related as possible and don’t really like the idea of the AcitiveX control housed elsewhere outside the main Vaadin application. It raises a number of concern - security and valid usage being a couple. Any guidance anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated.
In theory, I believe an Embedded with the ActiveX control being served e.g. as a StreamResource (so the Vaadin application serves the control) would probably be the correct approach. However, the client side part VEmbedded only supports a few types of embedded objects, and ActiveX components are not included.
If you are not afraid of doing a little client side programming, you can create your own version/copy of VEmbedded with support for ActiveX. It should not be too hard as you can probably just add another case in updateFromUIDL(), similar to how e.g. Flash is handled. Then use your own server-side counterpart or replace VEmbedded using GWT deferred bindings if you do not need any server side customization.