Availability

Netscape 3

Synopsis

navigator.plugins[i]
navigator.plugins['name']

Properties

description

A read-only string that contains a human-readable description of the specified plugin. The text of this description is provided by the creators of the plugin and may contain vendor and version information as well as a brief description of the plugin's function.

filename

A read-only string that specifies the name of the file on disk that contains the plugin program itself. This name may vary from platform to platform. The name property is more useful than filename for identifying a plugin.

length

Each Plugin object contains MimeType array elements that specify the data formats supported by the plugin. As with all arrays, the length property specifies the number of elements in the array.

name

The name property of a Plugin object is a read-only string that specifies the name of the plugin. Each plugin should have a name that uniquely identifies it. The name of a plugin can be used as an index into the navigator.plugins[] array. You can use this fact to determine easily whether a particular named plugin is installed in the current browser:

var sw_installed = (navigator.plugins["Shockwave"] != null);

Elements

The array elements of the Plugin object are MimeType objects that specify the data formats supported by the plugin.

Description

A plugin is a software module that can be invoked by Netscape to display specialized types of embedded data within the browser window. In Netscape 3, plugins are represented by the Plugin object. This object is somewhat unusual in that it has both regular object properties and array elements. The properties of the Plugin object provide various pieces of information about the plugin, and its array elements are MimeType objects that specify the embedded data formats that the plugin supports.

Plugin objects are obtained from the plugins[] array of the Navigator object. navigator.plugins[] may be indexed numerically when you want to loop through the complete list of installed plugins, looking for one that meets your needs (for example, one that supports the MIME type of the data you want to embed in your web page). This array can also be indexed by plugin name, however. That is, if you want to check whether a specific plugin is installed in the user's browser, you might use code like this:

document.write( navigator.plugins("Shockwave") ?
                "<embed src="movie.dir' height=100 width=100>" :
                "You don't have the Shockwave plugin!" ); 

The name used as an array index with this technique is the same name that appears as the value of the name property of the Plugin.

Don't confuse the fact that Plugin objects are stored in an array of the Navigator object with the fact that each Plugin object is itself an array of MimeType objects. Because there are two arrays involved, you may end up with code that looks like this:

navigator.plugins[i][j]            // The jth MIME type of the ith plugin
navigator.plugins["LiveAudio"][0]  // First MIME type of LiveAudio plugin 

Finally, note that while the array elements of a Plugin object specify the MIME types supported by that plugin, you can also determine which plugin supports a given MIME type with the enabledPlugin property of the MimeType object.

See Also

Navigator, MimeType