Hello all,

I am really looking for implementation advice as I have entered a new realm that I am not familiar with.

At the simplest level, I would like to find a way that I can read/write to a users machine from my web server. For this to work, I think I will have to install some sort of "plugin" on the users machine which can receive (or poll?) the server for instructions.

The above is the line of thought that I currently have, maybe using JAVA to do this. This needs to work on Linux, Mac and Windows OS.

I am really looking for advice on the above, is it a good idea? Is there a better way of doing this? Is there something out there already that I can build on top of?

I really appreciate all input and advice as this is something I have not done before.

Thanks all