Accessing a Web Service from within a browser’s client-side script

Have you already accessed a Web Service through the browser?
I’m not talking about that test page shown when you open the WSDL file in Internet Explorer.
I’m talking about accessing a Web Service through client-side script.
Imagine that you have a Web Forms application whose server does a Web Service operation on another server and passes the result back to the client. It serves only as a gateway between the client and the Web Service.
Using WebService Behavior there is no need to do this triangulation because the browser can access the Web Service directly using JavaScript or VBScript on Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
The feature is exposed through an HTML component (*.htc) but unfortunately it isn’t supported (anymore?) by Microsoft.

Published by

Alfred Myers

I have been interested in computers since I got my hands on a magazine about digital electronics back in 1983 and programming them has been paying the bills since 1991. Having focused on Microsoft-centric technology stacks for the best part of two decades, in recent years I’ve been educating myself on open source technologies such as Linux, networking and the open web platform.