Creating signed CAB files for Internet Explorer

Creating signed CAB files for Internet Explorer

Get the CAB Developers Kit or the CAB Resource Kit.

The CABDEVKIT has been incorporated into the SDK for Java, which is available at http://www.microsoft.com/java/sdk, and it's also available standalone from http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/prog/cab/default.htm. It will give you all of the tools you need to build cabinets. The latest version includes cabarc.exe, a new tool that makes it easier to create cabinets -directly from the command line. The CAB Resource Kit will provide the information necessary to help the tool development community understand and work with cabinets. It includes the compression and decompression APIs, documentation on their interfaces, and sample applications using these APIs.

Get the Code Sign Kit.

You can find the Code Sign Kit on the Visual J++ CD, the ActiveX SDK, or the Java signing tools in the SDK for Java 2.0 Beta 2 or newer. The ActiveX SDK is available at http://www.microsoft.com/INTDEV/sdk/. The SDK for Java 2.0 Beta 2 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/java/.

Get the *.spc and *.pvk files from VeriSign for the code signing.

Create .DDF. Samples are shown as below:

abClient: abClient.DDF, abClientClassPck.DDF.
jdbcMath: jdbcMath.DDF, jdbcMathClassPck.DDF.
jdbcSQL: jdbcSQL.DDF and jdbcSQLClassPck.DDF.
sample: sample.DDF, sampleClassPck.DDF.

Create .INF files. Samples are shown as below:

abClient: abClient.INF.
jdbcMath: jdbcMath.INF.
jdbcSQL: jdbcSQL.INF.
sample: sample.INF

Note: Using the GUID tool to generate a unique ClassID that will be put into the ClassID field within the .INF file.

Create the CAB file using the CAB Developers Kit: Samples of MS-DOS batch file are shown in the following files:

abClient: GenCAB_Client.bat,
jdbcMath: GenCAB_Math.bat,
jdbcSQL: GenCAB_SQL.bat,
sample: GenCAB_Sample.

Sign the CAB file using the Code Sign Kit. Following are the MS-DOS batch files we used for the digital signature.

abClient, jdbcMath, jdbcSQL: SignCABs.bat.
sample: SignSample.bat

Create the .html file that using these CAB object. Add the following <Object> …</Object> tags within the <body> … </body> tag of the .html file.

<OBJECT ID="Apptivity Client"

CLASSID="CLSID:4E1B3220-4497-11d0-AF9D-00AA000C0A34"

CODEBASE=".\CABS\abClient.cab#Version=1,0,0,0">

</OBJECT>

<OBJECT ID="JDBC Math classes"

CLASSID="CLSID:9156b740-8e33-11d0-af9d-00aa000c0a34"

CODEBASE=".\CABS\jdbcMath.cab#Version=1,2,0,0">

</OBJECT>

<OBJECT ID="JDBC SQL Data classes"

CLASSID="CLSID:21dfc0e0-8e34-11d0-af9d-00aa000c0a34"

CODEBASE=".\CABS\jdbcSQL.cab#Version=1,2,0,0">

</OBJECT>

<OBJECT ID="Sample"

CLASSID="CLSID:8A287820-C4D2-11d1-ABD4-0080ADB181D7"

CODEBASE=".\CABS\sample.cab#Version=1,0,0,0">

</OBJECT>

Note: The CLSID: field is the code number that generated by the GUID tool and put into the ClassID field of the .INF files.

Run application. Load the .html file into the I.E. browser to run.

Note: In order to make the Signed CAB files working, you need to set the Security level of the I.E. to medium or above. Notes: See http://suppport.microsoft.com/support/problems for Known Problems

Notes: See http://www.microsoft.com/java for the latest Java news and updated form Micorsoft.