I am trying to create a Chrome app but I need it to be accessible from any web page the user is viewing as the app is supposed to interact with the content of the page. From what I have seen, this is only done through extensions, but apps are the only ones that have the file system permissions needed to do what I am trying to accomplish.
Is it possible wrap a Chrome app with a Chrome extension to get the best of both worlds?
It should be possible to write both an app and an extension that interact through External Messaging.
Your question is a bit unclear as to what you want to achieve (a single item? then, no), but it's the best approximation.
It's hard to prove a negative, but I'm about 99.99% sure the answer is no.
Related
I’m building a simple browser, and I’d like to code most of it using HTML/JS/CSS. I cannot use iframes to display pages, due to frame-busting. What are my options?
The browser is not meant to be production-quality, but as a proof-of-concept for my thesis, similar to this interactive mockup. The main features it will need to support are:
Loading any page without frame-busting (even google.com),
Detecting when a link is clicked and opening it in a new frame, with the original one remaining intact.
I intend to write this using Web technologies, but it’s OK if it needs to be wrapped up in a small amount of something else, e.g., to turn it into an Android app. However, if it’s possible, it would be best if I could load the app as a web page. Finally, it is also preferable to be able to run the app on an Android device, but it’s OK if it only works on a desktop.
In researching this question, I came across a few options:
<iframe>. Google.com doesn't load at all in an iframe. I tried using the sandbox attribute, but it still didn’t load. Is there a way around this (for any page)?
Mozilla’s Browser API. This API was supposed to allow you to use the mozbrowser attribute in an iframe when building FirefoxOS apps. I suspect there’s no longer any way to access it. I couldn’t get the sample browser app loaded, and it seems that mozbrowser is not supported in WebExtensions. Did I miss something? Is there a way to make this work?
<webview> in a Chrome app. This is the only option that worked so far. I was able to download and install the sample browser app in Chrome. The one downside is that it seems to be Chrome-only (and I would prefer cross-platform or Firefox, all else being equal). Are there any issues with this option? Any way to make it run without Chrome?
Electron app with <webview>. While the setup here is more complicated than the previous option, it seems like the code would be very similar (there’s even a similar sample browser app). Are there any advantages/disadvantages to this option over the previous?
So, are there ways to make options 1 or 2 work? Are there perhaps other options?
HTML/CSS is a "language" translated by the browser into pages. You cannot code a browser in HTML. The easiest solution is to code it in C#.
I'm not sure if this is a good solution, but you can try Electron (nodeJS). You will only need to use JS/CSS/HTML.
I want to know if a html video is being displayed on a browser, from outside said browser, ideally without any plugins or such.
Motivation - I am trying to add this feature to Caffeine which is a Linux utility which disables the OS screensaver if, say, you are watching a movie.
The flash support was done I believe by detecting the presence of particular files or folders created by the plugin.
Ideally I would like 1 solution, but if I get 2 solutions for Firefox and Chrome, that's good enough.
p.s. Ultimately this would involve python code, but I am not sure if that is sufficient to make this question on-topic, or if this belongs on Superuser or Unix&Linux
This reminds me of something a web browser I was building in VB .Net which needed to detect if there where web pages that had tags like <a href="tel: or <a href="smsI know you said you didn't want a plugin but I would think you could easily right a browser plugin for for just this. In fact not exactly what your looking for but theirs a script monkey script called Hangouts Unlimited which prevents you from getting annoying messages asking if your still awake while in a G+ hangout. I don't know much about python but I would recomennd trying to identify the elements of the tags and when ever it finds such tags to disable the screen saver. Obviously the hangouts unlimited doesn't affect the web browser and that is most likely why you prefer not to have a browser plugin because you need to access system files outside of the browser. But I hope this helps a bit.
I am trying to understand about Chrome (browser) development. I am very new to this and trying to figure out where to start in order to develop for Chrome Browser.
Just have a couple of questions:
What is the difference between Chrome Browser apps vs. plugins vs. extensions (not sure, if this question make sense. But, hope you got what I am asking for)
What kind of applications can I develop for Chrome Browser
What technologies do I need to learn in order to develop for Chrome Browser.
To answer your first question this explains the differences between apps and extensions (I think there's no better way to explain their nature):
https://developers.google.com/chrome/web-store/articles/apps_vs_extensions
What do you mean with "what kind of apps"?
You can develop both hosted and packaged apps if is that what you intended, give a look at this:
https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index
Anyway the easiest way to start would be by building an extension, how-tos and
good documentation makes it good to start with:
http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/getstarted.html
Just to add to the above answer which was missing difference between Plugin and Extension is:
Plugin is a third-party library that is plugged-in to the browser and allows for being embedded on a webpage. It affects only the web page that is using the plugin.
Extensions change the browser UI, add menus or change overall look of the browser and can process each page that gets loaded.
So to sum it up - plugins add functionality and extra features to a particular webpage while extensions add functionality and features to the whole browser and change the behavior of the browser.
Just to add on new information since people may continue to hit this question: Chrome has basically deprecated plugins as of March 2017 (Chrome 57). If you go to chrome://plugins now, you won't see anything (you used to see a list of installed plugins with enable-disable links like for extensions).
It seems the reasoning is that the only plugins they actually wanted to allow you to enable/disable are Flash and PDF Viewer, both of which were moved to the Settings menus (if they weren't already there, not sure). The rest are considered to be integral parts of the browser. https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/29/google-removes-plugin-controls-from-chrome/
Makes things a bit simpler to think about now.
I'm looking for some advice on what I "should" research for a particular project I've been asked to keep in mind. I've been doing so for roughly 3 days by exploring various Google technologies, but none of them seems quite right.
I need to put together something for gmail that's roughly equivalent to something I've put together for Windows Outlook. I'll explain in brief therefor what I've done for Outlook users, to give you a feel for what I'm looking for. I put together an Outlook C# AddIn that when loaded by Outlook on startup adds a number of clickable tabs, buttons, and other assorted interface elements to the Outlook interface. When you click them the C# code in my Add-In is invoked in various ways to carry out various activities, like archiving the email message that's currently selected in a remote database managed by one of our web applications. It does this by calling a variety of Outlook C# APIs that are available to any loaded AddIn, to extract or manipulate various Outlook "objects". Another thing it does on a button click is bring up a web browser the AddIn creates from a .Net class "webbrowser control" instance, essentially adding chrome to the IE "engine". It also adds what it needs to to the DOM of that web browser to make a large number of Add-In C# functions callable by javascript code that might be running in pages of that browser, essentially giving our web applications a way to "ask" my AddIn to create Outlook contacts, tasks, messages etc on behalf of that application. The gist of it is that the UI I add to the Outlook application can be used to make various web service calls to our applications (based on the state of various Outlook "objects" made visible/manageable by way of the Outlook C# API), and the state of the Outlook application can be manipulated by javascript code running in web application pages that happen to be loaded in the web browser it creates.
I need to support "similar" functionality with respect to the altogether different gmail beast (rather than a Windows application a browser based web app). I feel a bit like I've been spinning in circles the last few days, while investigating. I began by researching gmail Sidebar and Contextual gadgets, to add some roughly equivalent UI of my own to gmail, but found fairly quickly that I can't really get to any gmail APIs using them, only try to shoehorn what I've got into a set of triggered gmail "behaviors" supported by contextual gadgets, which I came to realize isn't really sufficient to support what I want. Eventually I navigated my way to the set of developer pages describing Google Apps Script supported functionally, which seemed for a time like "the way to go" to provide me with hooks into gmail APIs. I played a bit with them, making a web app script to collect the subject lines of all my gmail messages and dump them into a UI also built by the script, just to get an experimental quick feel for how things fit together. The script works, but it seems pretty slow, taking roughly a minute to collect and display just 57 email subject lines. And I can't really figure out how to get any script built UI into the gmail user interface. I tried building a side bar gadget with the URL of my app script referenced (with no HTML or javascript in the content tag body at all). An area is allocated to the gadget ok, but my script UI never appears in it. After playing a bit unsuccessfully to get my script to run in an iframe in a completely different context, just experimenting again to see what I might be able to do, I'm beginning to get the impression that some security related caveat prevents it from building/displaying its interface in either an iframe or a gmail side bar gadget, though perhaps I'm just missing some essential piece of information.
My question is a bit big I know, but "should" I be looking to other Google technologies to build the sort of thing I have in mind, or am I "roughly" following a tenable track. I'm looking for some rough architectural advice I guess, some hints about what maybe I should further explore.
With Google Apps Script you cannot add anything to the Gmail interface. Putting it simply, it will not do what you want.
Now back to your problem, if sidebar and contextual gadgets are not enough for you. The only solution I see where you can really manipulate the page is via an add-on/extension/script installed on the users browser.
This approach is powerful, in the way that you can change the page as you like, but has its shortcomings as well. First, and more obvious, it's somewhat browser dependent and installed locally on a browser. Meaning that if the user switch computers or browsers, he'll need to re-install your add-on.
Also, you're somewhat dependent on gmail's "internal" structure. I say "somewhat" because that depends on how you coded your app. But they may make a change and break your app instantly, without any notice, since gmail's html-css structure is not a "published API".
Well, that's my 2 cents. I hope it helps.
Use JSF and rich faces. this can give u a google gmail like looks and development with this is very easy and fast.
Happy Coding
I am looking to develop a cross browser extension (plugin) and am having troubles getting answers to a few questions. So just looking for some simple answers if what I would like to do is possible. Thanks. I am currently looking at using Crossrider but would use whatever.
How do some extensions add a menu to the right click button. For example, when I right click in Chrome I see Evernote Web Clipper and Adblock options in the dropdown). How do they do that?
Could I embed a youtube player, for example. So when it's closed the audio still plays but when clicked you can see the video and what not?
For sites like Grooveshark. Could they have a plugin that when clicked you could change the song or stop the music, etc. So basically communicate with a website in your tab from the plugin?
Thanks. I just found Crossrider and it looks like some may be possible but havn't explored it too in depth yet. Kind of wondering if anyone has tried doing these things and if possible.
Google has a specific API for adding context menus. You can read about it here. Just be sure to request permissions for context menus in the manifest.json file and then you can add everything else to your background JavaScript file.
I don't think it's exactly possible to embed a YouTube player into the extension directly. Google Chrome will not allow for running inline scripts, which are clearly required to run YouTube within a popup page (or anything else, for that matter).
As for your third question, you would have to check into the individual APIs for any sites that you want to run the extension with. Every site is going to be a little bit different and my first instinct is that most sites are not going to allow for directly adding their player to the extension.
I would strongly suggest checking out the information about developing Google Chrome extensions available on Google Code. They provide a great tutorial and reference for the basics of developing extensions.