silverlight and ActiveX: the new architecture ready to go

I want to use silverlight to access serial ports. The reason: I actually do need it; also, it makes a point: if you can do this, you can do everything on web applications.

I was hoping I can use AIR/Apollo to talk to serial ports; I was so disappointed. Here is my solution: use ActiveX.

Note that it must be a pure classic ActiveX (in C++ or VB), so that we do not need to install .Net on the machine (preferably C++; but as long as it works, most machines can run VB anyway, and as long as we do not need to install versions of .Net. Hey, that is the very point of silverlight -- I do not really care Unix or Mac, or do IJ -- I am very pragmatic).

Also, the ActiveX must not have any business logic. We can use MSCOMM, write our own (again, in C++ or classic VB, no .Net here!), or, buy one. I do not really care – as long as all logic is written in C# (again, this is the very point of silverlight!).

http://www.activexperts.com/activcomport/


Because of the security model, Silverlight cannot call ActiveX directly, but we can use javascript to trick it.


http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2007/06/01/call-scribtable-methods-from-javascript-with-silverlight.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/devdave/archive/2007/05/21/calling-javascript-from-c.aspx

http://msmvps.com/blogs/luisabreu/archive/2007/05/17/calling-javascript-methods-from-your-silverligh-app.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnfa/archive/2007/05/09/the-silverlight-security-model.aspx

OK, finally the new architecture is ready, now, let’s have fun with the ActiveX v2, oops, Silverlight, with PIAB.