System-wide keyboard emulation in JavaScript+HTML Windows 8 app

Question

I am about to begin developing an application on Windows 8.1. To leverage my existing skills and experience I would prefer to use HTML rather than XAML for the front end.

One thing that I need this application to do is system-wide keyboard emulation. The application needs to map commands from a non-keyboard input device (speech, gesture...) and trigger keyboard events accordingly, which will be used to control another application. (à la FAAST, Control Mapper etc.) I need this to happen while another application is in focus.

I know that this is possible when using WinForms or WPF. Is it possible in a Windows Store + HTML + JavaScript app?

Answer 1

No, it's not possible to do so in Windows Store Apps, whether it's written in C#, JS or C++. Windows Store Apps cannot define "global listeners", but only act in the scope of itself, as it's contained in a sandbox and it's thombstoned if it's not the foreground app.