Google Chrome extension for Click Once?

Question

I have a client that wants to use Google Chrome for an internal web app we've developed(I don't blame him, I really enjoy using chrome!)

The problem is we have a win forms app that the users can launch from the browser, deployed using click once. I've known for a while that chrome doesn't support click once, but I figured by now there might be some support out there.

I have spent a few minutes searching around stack overflow and Google and didn't find anything obvious that suggests if anyone is planning on it or has developed a click once extension for chrome(similar to FFClickOnce).

So, has anyone got click once working under chrome or has anyone seen any news of a plug-in/extension that will support click once?

Solution 1

Google Chrome doesn't really support extensions adding the .NET version to the user agent but for plain launching .applications give this a try:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eeifaoomkminpbeebjdmdojbhmagnncl (No more available)

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickonce-helper/mdooolbdbmjaobhdondofgdmnbidlgfh

Solution 2

Chrome is not capable of auto-launching the setup.exe like Explorer does, but Chrome does download it like any other file. It's not difficult for the user to run it once it is downloaded until Chrome comes up with a way to cause it to automatically launch.

Solution 3

Install IETab for Chrome, then set up the rules to always open the launching page with IETab.

Solution 4

There is now an extension from Chrome that allows you to launch a click once app (ClickOnce for Chrome).

Unfortunately it does not update the user agent so it is impossible to know if the site will support it. There is a way to change the user agent in Chrome, but it's not something I would expect average users could do. However, here is an answer on the Chrome help forums that explains how for reference.

Basically create a shortcut to Chrome and add this command-line parameter to the target.

--user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/8.0.552.224 Safari/534.10 .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E" 

You might want to make sure you have the current user agent. Here is a site that will display it for you. The part you will want to add to the user agent is ".NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.5.30729;" (of course this might also depend on what is installed on the machine).

Another downside to this approach is that it does not appear the modified user agent is available in Javascript (I'm still getting the unmodified version).

------ EDIT ------

If you want to know if ClickOnce is available on the client, here is a Javascript function I wrote that will tell you...

this.hasClickOnce = function () {
    var userAgent = navigator.userAgent.toUpperCase();
    if (userAgent.indexOf('.NET CLR 3.5') >= 0) return true;
    if (window.clientInformation && window.clientInformation.plugins) {
        // check to see if a ClickOnce extension is installed.
        for (var i = 0; i < clientInformation.plugins.length; i++)
            if (clientInformation.plugins[i].name == 'ClickOnce plugin for Chrome') return true;
    }
    return false;
};

Solution 5

Google Chrome currently doesn't have extensions or an extensions architecture. The extensions architecture is still something they are planning/designing and I imagine won't be available anytime soon. However, there are signs that Greasemonkey support in Chrome is around the corner. Anyway, some type of Javascript code seems to be your only hope at the moment.

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Comments

[Dan]

This works for now. Thanks for the straight-forward idea! I have been focused on that *.application file but I can just alternately provide a link to setup.exe

[Dan]

Just did some more testing on this and I noticed you can't pass querystring parameters. This is the closest solution for now but still not perfect.

[Stanko Milosev]

Chrome does now include extensions

[Nikwin]

Last I checked, Firefox has an extension you can install for ClickOnce. FF allows an extension to modify the user agent, so the JS code above should work for FF.

[olidev]

I tried but it does not work with FireFox, I installed the plugin for FF: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/… so I checked it: clientInformation.plugins[i].name == 'Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.3.1' but it does not work

[Nikwin]

What "does not work"? The extension or the way I'm testing for it above? If it's the extension, you'll need to take that up with the developers of the extension. If it's detection of the extension, I know this worked at one time. If you figure it out, let me know and I'll update my answer.

[Andrew Dunkman]

I've updated this code sample to work with current browsers: gist.github.com/2371101

[Emmaly]

FYI this was a good one, but now it causes tons of ads to appear (popups, injection, etc) including ads for malware. And the ad opt-out within the extension is not obeyed. Stay away from this extension. I haven't found a replacement for this.

[Emmaly]

I commented the same thing on the answer above, but: FYI this was a good one, but now it causes tons of ads to appear (popups, injection, etc) including ads for malware. And the ad opt-out within the extension is not obeyed. Stay away from this extension. I haven't found a replacement for this.

[rolgalan]

I've been using that one for a long time, but unfortunately is no longer avaiable. This is the new link: chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickonce-helper/…