Many thanks Martin.

The main task which is todo for me is to embed on the fly an application 
dependent barcode image in a html page. The page is generated per XSLT 
transformation. Starting an external application (should have generated a 
barcode image file then referenced in html) as diskussed, seems not to work 
with a standard IE installation.

So I thought over an other way. How about using an ActiveX Control. This 
code:

         <object classid="CLSID:599651E8-0CB7-4154-90B3-DBA8E1CDA63E"
           id="Barcode" width="340" height="128">
           <param name="BarWidth"  value="100"></param>
           <param name="BarHight"  value="30"></param>
           <param name="BarCode"  value="1752500092625"></param>
         </object>

uses my activex control to show the barcode on the html page and it works. 
The only point is, that IE popups a message requesting whether I want to 
allow the execution auf the activex control since it could be in interaction 
with other elements on this site.

How can I get rid of this message? I tried allready several changes in the 
security settings of IE, but nothing really helped.

Regards,

Diana Bulthaupt