I need direct-to-printer functionality for my website, with the ability to distinguish a physical printer from a virtual printer (file).

Coupons.com has this functionality via a native binary which must be installed by the user. I'd prefer to avoid that.

SmartSource.com does it via Java applet:

Does anybody know how this is done? I dug through that Java APIs a bit, and don't see anything that would let you determine physical vs virtual, except looking at the name (that seems prone to misidentification). It would be nice to be able to do it in Java, because I already know how to write Java applets. Failing that, is there a way to do this in Flash or Silverlight?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Well deserved bounty awarded to Jason Sperske who worked out an elegant solution. Thanks to those of you who shared ideas, as well as those who actually investigated SmartSource.com's solution (like Adrian).