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I read that early builds of Chrome supported ActiveX, but was later restricted to certain MIME types (for support for say Windows Media Player). I then read Google was going to enable ActiveX strictly for the Korean market. How do I (re)enable this in Chrome?

Our web based product relies on ActiveX controls from 3rd parties to play custom video. This limits us to IE. We'd love to support Chrome also, but find it impossible w/o ActiveX support.

Instead of pushing your (3rd party) player at them, can you simply link or iframe the video and let the end user choose what player they want to use (e.g., by having it installed and configured for that mime type)? Then you'd be able to access the Mac and Linux markets, not to mention all of those Firefox users out there... – T.J. Crowder Oct 22, 2009 at 9:12 The ActiveX's we have are from 3rd party DVR manufacturers. That is how they all release SDKs. They are not cross platform, they do not have the source. It's activex or the highway. – Jeremiah Morrill Oct 22, 2009 at 9:15

There is a proprietary plugin called "Neptune" which says that it will allow you to use IE Tab functionality in Chrome on Windows.

Meadroid do this because they have ActiveX controls which they have written and they want them to be able to work in any browser, and they explicitly mention Chrome in the list of supported browsers for enabling ActiveX with this.

There is also a modified version of Chrome, called ChromePlus , which includes IETab, among other extra features.

I've not used either of these personally , but they look like they'll do what you want. I'd be interested to hear if they work out for you, as I know of other people who want to be able to use IEtab in Chrome :)

Wow - that's like Chrome Frame in reverse. In this case why use Chrome at all - you'd just lose the piles of stuff from IE without gaining any performance. – Keith Nov 6, 2009 at 16:18 @Keith : I think the point is that you get to use Chrome for 99% of what you do, and then IE for only the parts you have to (for ActiveX). If you want to use IE for particular features then just use IE instead... – David Gardner Nov 19, 2009 at 14:03 Indeed. Bad defaults have ruined many a reputation throughout the years. Sometimes just cutting bait and rebranding is the best move – Glenn Slayden Feb 26, 2017 at 23:08

This could be pretty ugly, but doesn't Chrome use the NPAPI for plugins like Safari? In that case, you could write a wrapper plugin with the NPAPI that made the appropriate ActiveX creation and calls to run the plugin. If you do a lot of scripting against those plugins, you might have to be a bit of work to proxy those calls through to the wrapped ActiveX control.

I'm not an expert but it sounds to me that this is something you could only do if you built the browser yourself - ie, not something done in a web page. I'm not sure that the sources for Chrome are publicly available (I think they are though), but the sources are what you'd probably need to change for this.

I appreciate the thought, but I don't think forking the Chrome browser and having customers install it would be received very well ;). – Jeremiah Morrill Oct 22, 2009 at 9:16 Yep, that is what I was trying to imply as well. Guess I'd check more carefully if my point is well explained next time. – laura Oct 22, 2009 at 9:59

Google Chrome comes with an ActiveX shim, as part of its default plugin array. So Google Chrome features at least partial support for ActiveX controls (as do many non-Internet Explorer browsers). I can't find information as to whether or not this includes support for ActiveX security certificates or the like, nor if/where such plugins can be controlled, within the browser.

..... Note that to enable the plug-in you must run Chrome with the following switch " --allow-all-activex" So in shortcut that is used to start up Chrome, add this after "Chrome.exe"

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