CONTROLLING COMMUNICATIONS WITH LOCAL APPLICATIONS USING A BROWSER APPLICATION

A communications facility for interactive communications with local applications. The flow of information to local applications is coordinated using a browser. The browser determines, at any given time, which of a plurality of communication paths is to be used to provide the information to the local application. The local application commences a polling loop, which enables messages to be received at the local application via the plurality of communication paths, without terminating the local application. Thus, the local application can have interactive communications with the browser and/or one or more remote servers.