Once the plug-in is installed on the local machine, users just start the browser and visit your Web site. If the application was embedded on the page, it starts running immediately. If the application was included as a hyperlink, the user simply clicks on the highlighted text or image associated with the hyperlink to invoke the application. Either way, the browser recognizes ACUCOBOL-GT object files, invokes the ACUCOBOL-GT Web Plug-in, and runs your application either in the end user's browser window or in a separate application window (depending on how you implemented it).
If your program is running inside of a browser, all of the functions accessible through the browser's menu and tool bars are available to the user at the click of a mouse. In this mode, if a user tries to start the plug-in again, the second instance of the plug-in looks for the "wrun32.exe" file in the "plugins" directory. If it is not found, the plug-in searches the system registry for a file type association to locate the "wrun32.exe" file. If the plug-in finds "wrun32.exe", it tries to run ACUCOBOL-GT as a separate process. If the "wrun32.exe" file is not found, the browser displays the following message:
You may only run one instance of the ACUCOBOL-GT plug-in at a time.
The user must get and install the stand-alone ACUCOBOL-GT runtime ("wrun32.exe") or copy "wrun32.exe" to the "plugins" directory to run multiple COBOL programs at once. This file is included with the plug-in but may have been inadvertently installed in the wrong directory.
When the plug-in runs a COBOL program using ACUCOBOL-GT as a separate process, the COBOL program has the same security features as if it were the first instance running in the browser. The IS-PLUGIN field of the SYSTEM-INFORMATION group item is set to "Y" in this case, but the W$GETURL and W$STATUS library routines are not available. (You can check the RETURN-CODE register to determine whether or not the routine is available. See section 5.4.1 Coding for the Plug-in for details.)
If your program is running in its own application window and your users have a copy of "wrun32.exe" installed in the "plugins" directory or have a standard ACUCOBOL-GT runtime installed on their machine, users can run multiple application instances without receiving an error message. Refer to section 5.5.1 Using the EMBED Tag for details on programming for this mode of execution.