calling programs

[russ_man7]

is it possible to call programs, like games or something, from javascript, or another client-side script?

[Jona]

Whadda ya mean exactly?

[russ_man7]

i'm making myself an active desktop, and i was hoping i could bump up the bells and whistles. maybe make a window with a list of my games, and i could load it from there. or a word processor, or media player or something like that.

[Jona]

Well, on my computer, every time I start it, it opens an HTML file and says, "Hello, Master! MaxMegs reporting for duty! Here are you most recent links..." And then it lists links to folders and/or files. If you link to a .mid, .midi, .mp3, .m3u, .mp2, or .avi file it should open your default media player, when you click it, automatically. If you have IE6+ then it should play inside of the Web page.

I will eventually have a seperate file that I use as a flatfile database on my own personal computer. I have the Apache Webserver and Perl.exe on my computer, so I can run CGI and Perl scripts on my local disk. So I just use perl, and every time I change some text in the flatfile database on my computer, the HTML file changes accordingly. Pretty neat.

[russ_man7]

clever idea with the media player, though not quite what i'm looking for. i generally set it to play through my whole playlist and leave it, and i usually prefer the independance of the seperate window, plus the keyboard buttons and all that stuff. still, functionality aside, it would make a snazzy addition to my desktop, and it'd be fun to try. do you know anywhere i could find out more? thanks. the whole perl thing sounds great, but i'm in school and can't really afford to take on another language, i'm still struggling a little with this one.

Thanks

[Jona]

Originally posted by russ_man7
i generally set it to play through my whole playlist and leave it, and i usually prefer the independance of the seperate window, plus the keyboard buttons and all that stuff. still, functionality aside, it would make a snazzy addition to my desktop, and it'd be fun to try. do you know anywhere i could find out more?

Uh, can you run that one by me again? I didn't quite catch it :p
the whole perl thing sounds great, but i'm in school and can't really afford to take on another language, i'm still struggling a little with this one.


Well, guess what. I'm in school, too! :)

[russ_man7]

i usually set my media player to play all of my music, and minimize it and go on with whatever else i'm doing. but since this whole hobby is more for fun and practice than anything else (it's not like javascript is going to turn my computer into a personal servant), i'd like to see how far i can take it. thanks for the tip.

Well, guess what. I'm in school, too!

high school? i'm a senior.

[Jona]

Uh... 8th grade....

[russ_man7]

well, dangit. i was thinking more along college level.

[Jona]

Sorry.