So today, Google announced a desktop app launcher for its Google Drive service: http://googledrive.blogspot.ca/2014/11/launch-desktop-applications-from-google.html.
Any ideas on how they implemented this? I'd like to do the same for a personal project. I know there's a way in node-webkit to do something like this, but if this ever becomes a native capability within Chrome browser...
To quote the announcement:
To get started, install the latest version of the Drive app for Mac or PC (version 1.18) ...
They are using a native app (not a Chrome app) to provide the functionality. As such, they can do whatever they want.
You can replicate this with a Native Host + extension approach.
Related
I'm working on a Quick Meeting type app. Where I want to check whether my app is installed on the system or not.
My Application installer copies the plugin to "Internet Plugins" folder on Mac OSX and ".mozila/plugins" on Linux.
I'm using this web plugin(NPAPI) to detect whether a application is installed on the system or not.
As we know, web plugins can access using navigator.plugins.
If plugin is found in plugins array then we were deciding to launch the application using custom url handler implemented by installed app, otherwise download the installer and ask user to install the app first.
This works fine with Firefox and Safari but not with Google Chrome. Also Chromium doesn't support NPAPI plugins and Google Chrome is dropping support for it.
I thought of using Pepper Plugin, but it doesn't have any api to check installed apps nor to access local files say in users home dir.
Any idea how to do it. Any pointer on this would be helpful.
Since you are registering a custom protocol already, this boils down to detecting the presence of a protocol handler.
Can't find an answer to this anywhere.
We have a prototype PhoneGap app that we deploy to Android devices. Using Chrome Developer tools we can debug it using the normal tools edit CSS etc and it will change the display on the device.
This is all great but I was wondering is there a way to use the screencast tool that displays your phone screen within developer tools for a phonegap app. From what I can tell it on;y seems to be able to pick up sites open in Chrome on the android device.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ashley
Screencasting of WebViews is not supported at this time.
Maybe it's not exactly what you are looking for, but it helped me when troubleshooting:
Depending on the toolset you are using, you can try to access your local webserver on your development machine from the chrome browser on your android device. For this to work, the phone must be in your network (Wi-Fi).
I'm developing a PhoneGap app using Visual Studio and configured my environment to allow access from remote computers, see this blog post.
I also ran this command for my 'web site', found on the blog of Scott Hanselman:
C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express>IisExpressAdminCmd.exe
setupFriendlyHostnameUrl -url:http://yourcomputername:555/
Finally I was able to use the Screencasting feature, using the chrome browser from android.
Except that I was not able to use hardware features such as NFC, using the app via the browser felt the same.
For other environments, the procedure to enable remote access should be similar.
Martin
I'm working on a Chrome app, and I'm wondering if there is a way to offer customers a single downloadable package that will provide both Chrome (the browser) and my app.
You sometimes see this with Java and Adobe AIR apps. You can either download just the app (if you already have the JVM or AIR, respectively), or you can download a package that includes the app plus the runtime.
In this case, Chrome is the runtime. Is there a way to offer a single download that will install Chrome along with my app? I can offer that as an option for users who do not already have Chrome installed.
This is something that is being actively developed now. The bug to follow is https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=341353, but there isn't much visible there as it is being developed in an internal repository at Google.
I have a HTML5 app, that I need to redistribute as a desktop application. One solution could be Chrome packaged apps, but it seems you can only install those packages using the Chrome webstore.
Is there an easy way to distribute Chrome apps using a stand-alone installer, and without requiring the end-user to have Chrome installed?
You can install them using the .crx file given to you while packaging, but that still requires chrome. Actually, you pretty much have to somehow have chrome on the target, as the standalone apps use it's framework. Hope it helps.
The CefView example from the Chromium Embedded Framework project could server for this.
I'm doing some reading on Google Chrome stand-alone applications and I see they are distributed like Chrome Extensions, and by all means, they seem work just like Chrome Extensions, so I assume they will run on the major platforms that run Chrome, like Linux, Mac and Win. But, I don't see any official word on the supported platforms, is there such a reference point?
Chrome packaged apps are available in ChromeOS, Linux, Mac and Windows. You are right, there is no explicit information about it in our online documentation, but that's unintentional.
In fact, you can already run Chrome packaged apps in all platforms mentioned above. The way they are launched - through the Chrome New Tab - is going to change and will behave more like native apps. The current launching method is for developer preview only.