ActiveX controls in a web page

Hi All,

I want to do a simple ActiveX control, which will basically be a wrapper over a C++ VoIP library/application. The intent is to embed the softphone in a browser so that the application doesn't need to be installed on a machine.

This will be long and boring, but I will share some more details, perhaps you guys can suggest some better ways (as you have done in the past ;)).

Ok. So, I have been trying different things to accomplish the above idea. I had a Python wrapper for the library, but unfortunately there is nothing like Python applet out there. Thoughts of using Jython or JPython were diminished as there is little or no support for C++ Python wrappers in it, moreover, I don't think it will work as JVM won't blindly call some compiled C++ code. Then I had a thought of using Silverlight and IronPython or a .NET wrapper over the C++ lib, but again I'm wondering whether Silverlight sandbox would call some C++ code blindly and let it do it's job? Hmm, I'm a little confused now to be honest. But anyways, Silverlight looks like an overkill as I don't need XAML or WPF over here.

Then I was wondering if an ActiveX control would let me accomplish the above mentioned task or not. The good old way looks the most reasonable to me. Two questions related to this:

Is it possible that the users are not asked to install the ActiveX control and it gets downloaded automatically (I know it sounds stupid, but I want to make the experience as seamless as possible)?

And is it possible that I just expose "PlaceCall", "HoldCall" like API's, which will then be called when the user clicks the corresponding buttons in the HTML form?

Any comments, suggestions, or pointers will be much appreciated. If you know of some other way to run an application in a sandbox kind of environment inside a browser then please enlighten me.

Thanks.