Sending events from to plugins element

Hi all,

I'm trying to write an extension that can "talk" to a plugin. The
plugin has no special scriptability builtin, and I dont control whats
in it. What I want to be able to is send mouse and keyboard events to
the plugin, just as if a user was doing it.

My first approach was to try to use the DOM to send event with
javascript, using dispatchEvent(), triggered by my XUL UI. But
unfortunately, I realized that it does not work.

Then I realized that plugins are getting events through NPAPI, and
that they are platform specific.

So it looks like my new approach should be to write a platform
specific XPCOM component that would send platform specific events to
the plugin.

But I have several "holes" in my design though.

1) Can I directly send events to a plugin instance by calling
NPP_HandleEvent from my XPCOM component ? or do I need to use the
underlying OS event mechanism to send an event to the plugin window ?
2) How do I get a pointer to a plugin instance (NPP) or to the
underlying window, from the HTML content ?

In my case, my first platform for this will be Linux/X11.

Thanks for any advice or pointers.

Anybody ?

On Sep 9, 10:44*pm, Fabrice <fabrice.gaut...@gmail.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to write an extension that can "talk" to a plugin. The
> plugin has no special scriptability builtin, and I dont control whats
> in it. What I want to be able to is send mouse and keyboard events to
> the plugin, just as if a user was doing it.
>
> My first approach was to try to use the DOM to send event with
> javascript, using dispatchEvent(), triggered by my XUL UI. But
> unfortunately, I realized that it does not work.
>
> Then I realized that plugins are getting events through NPAPI, and
> that they are platform specific.
>
> So it looks like my new approach should be to write a platform
> specific XPCOM component that would send platform specific events to
> the plugin.
>
> But I have several "holes" in my design though.
>
> 1) Can I directly send events to a plugin instance by calling
> NPP_HandleEvent from my XPCOM component ? or do I need to use the
> underlying OS event mechanism to send an event to the plugin window ?
> 2) How do I get a pointer to a plugin instance (NPP) or to the
> underlying window, from the HTML content ?
>
> In my case, my first platform for this will be Linux/X11.
>
> Thanks for any advice or pointers.[/color]