is there a way to detect MS Word on client M/c

[ksridhar69]

Hi Friends,
Is there a way to detect MS Word on client M/C.? Because we have a MIME type word. If word is not there on client M/C it is showing in html and user does not understand

[QuackHead]

What do you mean by "Client M/C" ?

[scroots]

i think he means clients machine (e.g. the user PC)

scroots

[QuackHead]

Ok, I thought that's what he meant, but I was really not sure...

as far as detecting word or not, as someone said in the other posting of this same topic (Hint hint - no cross posting!) you can't detect word because it isn't a browser plugin.

All you can do is offer a download to Microsoft's free "word reader" it's kinda the same idea as acrobat...

~Quack

[whammy]

You can specify the MIME type - check out Dave Clark's posts by searching for "MIME" (you might want to check out the old forum on javascriptkit.com).

[glenngv]

another way is using client-side vbscript. it's a server-side forum but i'll post it anyway.

possible in IE only and activex is enabled in the browser

<script language="vbscript">
function detectWord()
on error resume next
set objWordDoc = CreateObject("Word.Document")
if (err.number<>0) then
detectWord=false
else
detectWord=true
end if
set objWordDoc=nothing
end function
</script>

<script language="javascript">
if (document.all) {
if (detectWord()) alert("You have MS Word installed.");
else alert("You must allow ActiveX control to run in your browser and \nYou must have

Microsoft Word installed in your computer.");
}
</script>

[QuackHead]

You can do alot of *weird* things with ActiveX controls, but that would assume that all the users to your site have ActiveX enabled... (I'm not sure if IE comes installed with ActiveX enabled...) AND all the users have to be using IE - because ActiveX is a Microsoft thing, and Gecko, Mozilla, Opera, etc. do not support it.

In short - there is no sure fire way to detect word.

~Quack