Is it possible to launch an application from a browser? I am not talking about opening a file from a browser (like open a PDF with Adobe Reader), but rather opening a new (blank) instance of an application that is installed on the user's machine.
Hypothetical situation: User browses a website that lists computers that can be managed via RDP. He clicks on a link to 192.168.1.10, that link opens Microsoft RDP client (mstsc.exe) with that ip address already filled out.
I am talking strictly about Windows universe.
Is that thing even doable outside of ActiveX and IE?
Is it wise to attempt this in IE with ActiveX?
You can't really "launch an application" in the true sense. You can as you indicated ask the user to open a document (ie a PDF) and windows will attempt to use the default app for that file type. Many applications have a way to do this.
For example you can save RDP connections as a .rdp file. Putting a link on your site to something like this should allow the user to launch right into an RDP session:
<a href="MyServer1.rdp">Server 1</a>
You want to create an Asynchronous Pluggable Protocol Handler.
Here is a guide to registering an Application Protocol.
We use a sonicwall vpn. It launches a java applet that launches mstc with all the credentials setup. You really can't do this without a java applet or activex plugin.
Microsoft uses this technique itself on their small business server for getting inside the network. I wouldn't say it is a terrible idea, as long as platform independence isn't important.
Some applications launches themselves by protocols. like itunes with "itms://" links. I don't know however how you can register that with windows.
You can use SilverLight to launch an application from the browser (this will work only on IE and Firefox, newer versions of chrome don't support this)
Example code here
I achieved the same thing using a local web server and PHP. I used a script containing shell_exec to launch an application locally.
Alternatively, you could do something like this:
<a href="file://C:/Windows/notepad.exe">Notepad</a>
You can use the following:
<a href="c:\windows\Notepad.exe"
type="application/octet-stream">Launch Notepad</a>
From what I remember using file:// is blocked by Chrome and Firefox.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3057576/how-to-launch-an-application-from-a-browser