Using Google Chrome as bundled runtime for HTML app? - html

I have an HTML application that run offline, and I want to end up with a way to open the app from an exe file on Windows. I have tried Visual Studio, but the app does not run in the WebBrowser component.
I am pretty sure I have read that I can use Chrome (or some kind of Chrome version of Chrome) as a "bundled runtime", but I have a really hard time finding anything about it. Does it exist?
Using chrome as an engine (instead of "web views" based on Internet Explorer) would also make sure that the application would run nice on computers which has not updated Windows or browsers for a while.

You must be thinking of CEF: the Chromium Embedded Framework.

Related

Framework7 offline app cross origin blocked on IE & Chrome. Is there a simple local server solution as an alternative?

I am currently building an app using the Wordpress API and Framework7 that is solely intended for offline use. The offline app works perfectly in safari with local file restrictions disabled, however I understand a similar option is not available in IE or Chrome.
Unfortunately for me, the project is being developed exclusively for surface pro, so it has to work in IE.
This being the case, are there any alternative solutions in which I can quickly and smoothly serve the local files as a local server? Ideally avoiding the use of the command line and/or MAMP/XAMPP.
Found that tinyweb offered a solution that was almost perfect, however the local files were all 403 forbidden when loaded up.
Any suggestions would be welcome.
You can evaluate to encase your app in a Cordova app for Windows.
Or, if it suits your needs, a quick and dirty solution is pkg.

Google map integration problem: you seem to be using an unsupported browser

When we want to integrate Google map in windows application by using C# it gives the following errors when we run the application
error : you seem to be using an unsupported browser
Based from this forum, it seems that there is/are one or more addons or extension which is not allowing map to load. You can try to check one by one. Maybe it updated and broke maps.
You can also check this SO question which states that maybe the WebBrowser control is emulating an older version of Internet Explorer on your machine.
By default, this feature is enabled for Windows Internet Explorer and for applications hosting the WebBrowser Control. To disable this feature by using the registry, add the name of your executable file to the following setting.
Hope this helps!
You can consider a different web browser embedded control. For example, you can look at Chromium Embedded Framework.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework
I believe it should work pretty well. According to the documentation this framework embeds a Chromium browser (open-source web browser closely related to the Google Chrome browser) which uses the modern HTML5 and V8 JavaScript engine.

Clickonce: Appropriate for web site that is only supported in Chrome?

We are looking for an easy way for our users to download and install a small client widget (it is a windows app) used with our (much larger) web app.
Our web app is currently only supported in Chrome.
Our concern is that the clickonce support piece may be missing from most Chrome installs.
The questions:
-- Is clickonce really going to be useful in this situation?
-- What is the best option for "one click" download-and-install for Chrome on windows?
ClickOnce uses NPAPI which is being removed from Chrome. You will need to look at NaCl, Native Messaging or PPAPI instead of ClickOnce. There used to be browser extensions that you could use, however they have been removed from the store (or no longer work).
Using Chrome should not matter, so yes Click once will be useful in this situation.
The only thing you need to worry about is your clients using Windows and the appropriate version of the .net framework. I hope this helps.

Running HTML5 code in android app without internet connectivity?

Is it possible to have HTML5 files stored inside the .apk file of an android app and run the files on the android app without requiring internet connectivity?
Yes. If your a native Android programmer look at the WebView. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/WebView.html
If your not, you could look at things like http://cordova.apache.org/ and http://www.appcelerator.com/platform/titanium-sdk/ and others. But honestly I've never meet a dev who has a good thing to say about these for any kind of complex app.

complete client side application using HTML 5

Is it possible to create a complete client side application using HTML 5 (it will embed chat clients, stock ticker) + JavaScript, and then bundle is with underlining Firefox 3.5 engine, so that user can install it as a desktop app on Linux, and then it runs in its own window using firefox 3.5 engine. The app will store everything in local storage - like url, usernames etc, and will not interact with any local server.
It would pure HTML5 + JavaScript based client web app which would be packaged, and can be installed or launched from startup scripts.
Or instead of using firefox 3.5 engine, we can use Mozilla Prism to convert it to web app, and then bundle it.
Well, you should take a look at xulrunner (https://developer.mozilla.org/En/XULRunner). This is an engine to build portable applications... like firefox. You are getting full Gecko engine + full access to the environment, like a plain application. (XUL is something similar to HTML -- it is still XML-based UI description -- but it is better suited to develop desktop applications -- using native/almost native UI).
It sounds like what you're trying to do can be done with Adobe AIR (though there is no HTML5 support yet). Adobe AIR apps can be written with just HTML and JavaScript, though AIR uses the WebKit engine, not FireFox's.
The app part is surely doable (and will work just about everywhere, not just Linux), the bundling appears to be the more problematic part -- not every distro of Linux will like the specific way you built the bundled Firefox, not to mention that you're cutting yourself off from just about any non-Linux box on the planet (and every linux box with a non-x86 compatible processor, etc, etc)... all for the sake of that bundling. Can't you stop at the prism aka webrunner part, without bundling?
I'm almost sure I've seen something like this done with Qt Webkit. It was only a few lines of C++ to create the window with the web browser control and load a local page. The page created the UI of the application. I can't find the link though.
I second what liori said about using XULRunner. You can deploy your HTML application easily, and, more importantly, when you run into limitations of HTML 5 or its level of support in Gecko, you can work around it by using XUL APIs.
(AFAIK, Firefox 3.5 doesn't support any socket APIs in HTML content, and it doesn't support offline storage in web apps, only the localStorage part).