Other in-process COM servers based on NPDOLPHIN.DLL

I'm curious about whether anyone has tried (or whether it's even possible) to
use the Web Plugin Builder to create a new DLL as an in-process COM server that
supports a different interface.  For example, I was just thinking about how
useful it would be to be able to create add-ins for Office using the
IDTExtensibility2 interface, but it's not clear to me whether I could actually
do that in Dolphin.  The stuff I've found rummaging around in MSDN and the
EducationCenter makes it seem like it might be possible, but my lack of
experience in this area may be an impediment to true understanding.

Don

Don

You wrote in message news:9c71db$capel$[hidden email]...
> I'm curious about whether anyone has tried (or whether it's even possible)
to
> use the Web Plugin Builder to create a new DLL as an in-process COM server
that
> supports a different interface.  For example, I was just thinking about
how
> useful it would be to be able to create add-ins for Office using the
> IDTExtensibility2 interface, but it's not clear to me whether I could
actually
> do that in Dolphin.  The stuff I've found rummaging around in MSDN and the
> EducationCenter makes it seem like it might be possible, but my lack of
> experience in this area may be an impediment to true understanding.

Certainly the mechanism used by the plug-in could support implementing
in-proc servers with Dolphin in general. And now I think about it, it might
not be that hard to do. I think it will need a new "stub" though, which will
be very similar to the NPDolphin stub. The difference would be that this
stub would expose a DllGetClassFactory export that would be responsible for
communicating with the Dolphin image in order to request an IClassFactory
onto the class factory in the image - a process very similar to the way in
which the plugin stub asks for an INPDolphin onto the object in the image
which actually implements the Netscape plugin API. Hmmm....

Regards

Blair

Blair,
"Blair McGlashan" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
[snip]
> Certainly the mechanism used by the plug-in could support implementing
> in-proc servers with Dolphin in general. And now I think about it, it might
> not be that hard to do. I think it will need a new "stub" though, which will
> be very similar to the NPDolphin stub. The difference would be that this
> stub would expose a DllGetClassFactory export that would be responsible for
> communicating with the Dolphin image in order to request an IClassFactory
> onto the class factory in the image - a process very similar to the way in
> which the plugin stub asks for an INPDolphin onto the object in the image
> which actually implements the Netscape plugin API. Hmmm....

So it is slightly beyond the scope of what we can currently do with the
Professional version, but not beyond the realm of the possible.  "Not hard
to do" and "hmmm" give me hope that more might be forthcoming on
this topic in the future.  I wait with bated breath...

Don

>
> Regards
>
> Blair
>
>