A helper application is an external viewer program launched to display content retrieved using a web browser. Some common examples include Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player for playing streaming content.
Unlike a plugin(whose full code is included into browser code), a small line is added to the browser code to tell it to open a certain helper application in case it encounters a certain file format.
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)