For some test use cases, I need to change the time-zone or time-zones that my browser have. A time-zone is read by js by a web application I'm working on.
Is there an easy way to change a time-zone of a browser?
Method 1: Using Developer Tools to Change Chrome Timezone
To change the Chrome time zone for testing, follow the steps below:
Open DevTools in Chrome -> Open the Console drawer.
Click on the three-dotted menu -> Click on More tools -> Sensors.
From the Sensors tab, set the location according to your preference and define the specific timezone.
Refer to the image below to better understand how to set a timezone for testing in Chrome.
Method 2: Using BrowserStack Live for Cross Browser Geolocation Testing
In certain cases, developers and QAs need to simulate the timezones of specific geographies on particular legacy versions (for example, Chrome version 55). This helps developers and testers ensure a consistent UI experience for their websites across distinct browser versions.
However, to simulate time zones on the latest and legacy versions of popular browsers like Chrome or Firefox, one needs to have an inclusive testing setup. Naturally, it is not feasible for all teams to manually install each browser version for testing purposes.
BrowserStack makes it convenient for teams of all sizes to test websites across distinct time zones and geo-locations on desired browser versions. Its real device cloud offers 3000+ device browser combinations for comprehensive testing of websites in real user conditions. One simply needs to sign up for a free trial to get started with changing time zones on different Chrome versions.
Unlike the first method, one does not need to explicitly change the timezone from DevTools in this method. Simply choose the specific location (for example, Germany), and the timezone for that geographic region is configured automatically. Follow the steps below:
Signup on BrowserStack Live or log in if you already have an account.
Navigate to the Live Dashboard.
From the dashboard, select the operating system and browser to test on.
The moment you select the desired browser version, a new Live session will be initiated immediately for the same.
Once the session begins, select the Change Location option from the floating toolbox. Now, choose the geographic region keeping in mind the time zone you wish to test in.
As the location is set to None by default, the search results stay unaltered. However, once the location is set to Germany for a random query like time, the search results appear as per the timezone of Germany. Refer to the image below to observe timezone-based results.
As one can observe, the search results displayed align with the German timezone.
Therefore, it is easy enough to change the Chrome timezone for testing websites across diverse browser versions.
Related
I have a small device implementing a Bluetooth server and a JS page which I open on Chrome that connects and manipulate some of the device characteristics.
Since I'm still playing with the server code, I'm constantly changing/adding services and characteristics and noticed that Chrome still shows my the old ones (actually, more like an unclear mix of old and new ones). Other devices like my phone show the new characteristics.
How can I order Chrome to rediscover services and delete its cache? I've tried to just define the Service Change Characteristic and it didn't help, then tried notify the client upon connection with the values 0x0000 and 0xFFFF (assuming that would invalidate the whole range of handles) but nothing happened..
Also - what does Chrome take as the device name? (in case there are multiple "names", I refer to what's displayed in the scan window). I've tried to set the name in the "aioble.advertise()" function, and also set it in the device name characteristic (0x2A00 under the generic access service) and both didn't change the value. It's still showed as "ESP32" which I believe is some kind of default..
I was hinted that the bluetooth spec is implemented differently between Chrome/Android/iPhone/etc.. So I was hoping to get an answer of how does Chrome implement the Service Changed feature? What should I do as the server to order the client to refetch services data?
Thanks!
I looked at the Web Bluetooth Draft Community Report, last updated on 9 June 2022. Section 6.6.5. Responding to Service Changes describes how Web Bluetooth might be supposed to handle a service changed event.
But according to the Implementation Status, the Service Changed Event is not implemented on any of the platforms as of now.
You could open an issue on their Github page to get more information.
I'm using the couchbase admin tool and one of the most useful features for me is the ability to go into the documents of a particular bucket and then using the document filter dialog I type a document prefix that I've reserved for a particular document type and then I immediately get a filtered list of just documents of this type.
For instance, if I had a bucket called "sports" which had data for all sorts of sports, I might have set of records related to tennis, football, etc. and let's assume that the ID's of these documents were all prefixed with the particular sport in question. So in this case I'd simply put football into the Document Filter dialog and would expect to see just those documents whose ID's start with "football". This is happening as I type. This functionality works perfectly fine on my main development machine but on my laptop and in my production environment typing results in nothing as I type. I can press the "Lookup Id" button on any environment and as long as a proper ID has been specified it will load the document but the real-time filtering is for me critical to making the admin functionality useful to me.
It's worth mentioning that both my main dev machine and laptop are on OSX and production is Ubuntu. Also of note, my main development environment is still creeping around on version 2.0.1 because I'm afraid of losing this functionality but my laptop is running 2.5.1 and I think prod is the same.
Also, looking at the network panel in the debugger I do notice an important variation:
Both laptop and main dev machines load the document viewer without any JS errors
Independant of typing on into the filter dialog my main dev fires off REST calls periodically to: http://couchserver:8091/pools/default?uuid=xxxxxx&waitChange=20000&etag=xxxxxx
As soon as I type into the filter dialog I see network requests that look like this: http://couchserver:8091/couchBase/reference_data/_all_docs?startkey=%22football%22&endkey=%22football%EF%BF%BF%22&skip=0&include_docs=true&limit=21&_=1399627171015
My laptop, where the functionality doesn't work, does also seem to have the basic polling message listed above but when I type into the filter dialog no message is sent (and no JS error thrown either). Just silence. :(
It appears from IRC and other channels that this functionality has been removed because it was causing stability problems with large datasets. This is a bit worrisome to me and I still feel strongly that this functionality is highly desirable in an admin tool (at least in development environments although I would argue both prod and dev).
Anyway, while the UI still uses the "filter" terminology I think it's fair to say the filter terminology has been removed. I will now have to write my own admin interface. :(
We have a dashboard system (Dashing) that we can view through a browser (Chrome). We have two TVs up displaying this dashboard now. Each TV has a $350 PC connected to it. I am wondering if we could use a Chromecast plugged into each TV and have only one PC "displaying" the dashboard. This is relevant because 1) we are looking at adding monitors after we expand our office and 2) the PCs tend to be a pain in the ..., with things like updates pushed from IT, password chances, etc. One PC would definitely be better. Bonus points if I can get rid of all the PCs and just use Chromecast pointed at a URL.
Thanks,
Although not supported officially, I was successfully able to cast my entire screen to two devices by using both the Google cast and the Google cast (Beta) extensions simultaneously. I could only get it to work using one extension in an incognito window and the other in a normal window.
You can cast to multiple Cast devices if you create an additional "people" in Chrome settings for each of your Cast devices, then open a new window(not tab) for each "people".
Each "people"/user can attach to a different Cast device. It helps to match the user name to the device or location to keep it all straight.
Ex: Cast a movie from NAS to 3 TVs.
Use VLC to stream movie.
Open 3 Chrome/chromium windows(not tabs), changing each window to a unique user/person.
Start streaming.
Point each window at stream, play and cast to a different device.
Performance will depend on ability of PC and router/wifi. We use the Ethernet power supply for Chromecast to reduce load on wifi AP. (We had Cat5 Ethernet already installed)
Since all browser windows are pointed at same stream, the sync is pretty good. Although we usually stream to living room, patio, and game room which a difference hard to detect.
Hope this helps someone.
Currently, you can only be connected to a single device at a time, hence can only mirror to one Cast device. You mentioned you are mirroring your browser. Is the content that you are mirroring a simple page, a video, ...? You may be able to come up with a simple app that would eliminate the need for having PC's completely. Tell us more about the content you are mirroring (hopefully it is not flash :-) )
The Chrome browser extension can only cast to one device. A workaround is to install the Chrome browser extension Beta version alongside the non-beta version, and you'll have a second browser extension that can cast to a second device.
My colleague suggests that if you install Chrome Canary, the Beta version of Chrome, you can run two Chromes, with two extensions each, and support four devices.
Hopefully, this limitation will be removed, and the browser extension will support multiple devices.
Our use case is driving information kiosk displays from a single computer. Chromecast is nice in that the display's physical security does not expose the PC driving the display.
When I use http://html5demos.com/geo to locate myself, it shows wrong location(wrong city) in FF and chrome. Any reason why this is happening
I had the same problem using Chrome on Windows, but I got it to work, at least some of the time.
I was also using the example http://html5demos.com/geo
The location was not just inaccurate, it was also in the wrong city.
I tried the same example on my iPad (Safari) and there the location was correct. My iPad is using the same WiFi network as my PC, so I then knew it was not a problem with my ISP returning the wrong location, it was to do with the browser on my PC.
I got it to show the correct location in Chrome by going into the Chrome settings and clearing the cache and cookies.
It wasn't sufficient to just select in Chrome "Tools/Clear Browsing Data/Cookies & Cache",
it was only after in Chrome I selected "Settings/Privacy/Content Settings/All Cookies and Site Data" and deleting all cookies, did the example show the correct location.
Update 1: I tried the same geolocation example the next day, and to my annoyance it was again showing the wrong city. I tried to get it to work by clearing the Chrome settings as described above and this time this solution didn't work. However, when I used the application CCleaner and selected Cleaner/Applications and cleared all of the Chrome data (internet cache, internet history, cookies and session) the geo example showed the correct location. I'm using the latest version of Chrome. Hopefully in future versions it will work more consistently.
Update 2: I tried the procedure above at a later date and couldn't get it to produce the correct location at all. It could be that the geolocation is now returning the location of my internet service provider, rather than my location, using my IP and Google Location Services. Of course this location is fairly useless. The reason why my iPad is returning the correct location is probably because it contains an inbuilt GPS. The iPad 3G / 4G have a GPS chip built in to the GSM receiver chip, whereas WiFi only models have no GPS. When 'location services' are switched off in the iPad settings, location via both GPS and IP are switched off. It would be useful just to be able to switch off the GPS on my iPad and just use IP location, but I'm not sure if that is possible.
Update 3. As I mentioned, I'm using a WiFi stick in my PC. I have noticed that when I look at the available WiFi networks (with View Available Wireless Networks) and mine is the only network, the geolocation example returns a location in a different city, but if any of my neighbours have a WiFi network in range of my PC, the geolocation example returns my exact location, to within a few metres. i.e. the geolocation in the browser is clever enough to use this extra information to locate me.
(I think the other answers to this question completely on the wrong track. The questioner states that the location was being shown in the wrong city, so the question is not to do with the location accuracy)
Different devices have different degrees of accuracy and it is important that your application be aware of the difference. A cell phone that has a GPS unit inside of it that is switched on is usually accurate within three meters. A cell phone without a GPS unit, with the GPS unit switched off to maximize battery, or at a location where the GPS can’t contact the GPS satellites will have to use cell tower triangulation to estimate the users location and is typically accurate within 3000 meters which is accurate enough to know what neighborhood the user is in but completely useless to tell them what building they are looking at.
If the user is accessing your site from a computer connected to a land-based broadband connection it can usually pinpoint the precise address by consulting a provider database and pinpointing the exact address from the DSL or cable provider.
To get the accuracy of the location information, you can query the accuracy property on the coords object. The accuracy property isn’t exact by any means but it will give your application a good sense as to whether or not you have a nearly precise position or a neighborhood.
According to the Firefox geolocation FAQ, Firefox uses Google for location services. It sends Google the following information:
Your IP address
Information about nearby Wi-Fi access points
A random Google-assigned identifier (changed weekly)
I assume it will also use GPS data if your computer has a receiver installed, but the FAQ doesn't mention that. Maybe because there's no need to use Google's sever if you have GPS data available.
I assume that Chrome, as a Google product, is using the same geolocation database.
As for why you're getting incorrect answers, that would reside in Google's database. There are most definitely errors in there. For instance, my office computer shows up in Mexico city even though my IP address and the IP address of my employer's proxy server are both in Plano, Texas, and all other IP-to-location databases have this correct (taken from the registered whois data for the address.)
Here are two Google pages that they claim will help, although they haven't done a thing for me yet:
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/873
https://support.google.com/websearch/contact/ip
The latter (contact/ip) is a form for reporting Google location problems that manifest as Google redirecting you to the wrong country's home page. They say it may take over a month to correct the database. I've been waiting nearly two months with no luck.
There are Firefox add-ons that can be used to force your browser to report a specific location. They're meant for debugging location-aware web services, but they could also be used in a case like this, where the normal method isn't working.
I think if you could user the the method watchPosition() instead of getCurrentPosition() the coordinates will be updated too much which will produce a better result
note : it's better to use another browser other than chrome it doesn't support the watchPosition() method good enough
I figured it out. Every mobile phone has its location mode default to High Accuracy. High Accuracy uses GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or mobile Networks to determine location.
This might be a challenge as there are many variables to getting a device's location.
The solution will be to change the location mode from High Accuracy, to Device only or GPS only.
Device only or GPS only is supposed to use just GPS and device sensors to determine location. I have tried it, it works like a charm.
Use link below to change Location mode
https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-106080/
I depends on which method is used to get your location. If it uses IP then you could show up pretty much anywhere. If it uses Wifi then it might be just be biased data.
Our web analytics package includes detailed information about user's activity within a page, and we show (click/scroll/interaction) visualizations in an overlay atop the web page. Currently this is an IFrame containing a live rendering of the page.
Since pages change over time, older data no longer corresponds to the current layout of the page. We would like to run a spider to occasionally take snapshots of the pages, allowing us to maintain a record of interactions with various versions of the page.
We have a working implementation of this (Linux), but the snapshot process is a hideous Python/JavaScript/HTML hack which opens a Firefox window, screenshotting and scrolling and merging and saving to a file. This requires us to install the X stack on our normally headless servers, and takes over a minute per page.
We would prefer a headless implementation with performance closer to that of the rendering time in a regular web browser, but haven't found anything.
There's some movement towards building something using Mozilla source as a starting point, but that seems like overkill to me, as well as a maintenance nightmare if we try to keep it up to date.
Suggestions?
An article on Digital Inspiration points towards CutyCapt which is cross-platform and uses the Webkit rendering engine as well as IECapt which uses the present IE rendering engine and requires Windows, natch. Nothing off the top of my head which uses Gecko, Firefox's rendering engine.
I doubt you're going to be able to get away from X, however. Since CutyCapt requires Qt, it requires either X or a Windows installation. And, similarly, IECapt will require Windows (or Wine if you want to try to run it under Linux, and then you're back to needing X). I doubt you'll be able to find a rendering engine which doesn't require Qt, Gtk, GDI, or Cocoa, and therefore requires a full install of display libraries.
Why not store the HTML that is sent out to the client? You could then use that to redisplay in a webbrowser as a page to show what it looked like.
Using your webanalytics data about use actions, you could they use that to default the combo boxes, fields etc to the values the client would have had, even change the CSS on buttons, etc, to mark them as being pushed.
As a benefit, you don't need the X stack, don't need to do any crawling or storing of images.
EDIT (Re Andrew Moore):
This is were you store the current CSS/images under a version number. Place an easily parsable version number in a comment in the HTML. If you change your CSS/images and use the existing names, increment the version number in the HTML output sent out.
The system that stores the HTML will know that it needs to grab a new copy and store under a new number. When redisplaying, it simply uses the version number to determine which CSS/image set to use.
We currently have a system here that uses a very similiar system so we can track users actions and provide better support when they call our help desk, as they can bring up the users session and follow what they did, even some-what live.
you can even code it to auto-censor sensitive fields when it is stored.
depending on the specifics of your needs perhaps you could get away with using one of the many free webpage thumbnail services? snapcasa, for example lets you generate thousands per month / no charge no advertizing .. (not ever used, just googled 'free thumbnail service') to find this.
just a thot