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Comment by anta40 | Hacker News Reader

So, how do you interact with connected hardwares, then? For example, the company I'm working on have a interal-only, web application that interact with smart card readers. This one of the cases where Java applet comes in handy...

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One option would be a Java WebStart application. You could reuse virtually all of your code.

If you can have your users install a chrome extension, you can use the native messaging APIs: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging .

One of the nice things about Java is it didn't force a specific web browser on the user.

If you presented something to me that required Chrome, I would leave. I don't use Chrome and I do not wish to.

havent looked it up in a while but isnt there a servlet based way to read smartcards?

regardless, using applets to deal with smartcards seems oxymoronic ;)

Because smart cards are hardware devices on the client, and nothing in HTML, CSS, or JavaScript gives you access to the client's USB ports.

For now :-)

https://wicg.github.io/webusb/

i guess i wasnt clear. i meant java servlets, not js. something like: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24351472/getattributejava...

For some reason actual smartcard applications seem to use proprietary applets rather than the open standards around client certs.

The tool is used to manage some our smart card applets. And since it web-based, we don't need to give the copy of the tool to other people.

I don't write the tool, but maybe I can convince my supervisor to rewrite it into desktop app :)

http/2

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