visual basic web browser links - perform action in program when clicked - html

I have a web browser form inside my program, that displays a custom html page. When I click on the link, instead of going to another page, I would like it to do something in the program (tell the program to do something, and give it a variable or 2)
any suggestions? I was thinking maybe something javascript related, but I don't know much about how vb handles things like this

I think what you are trying to do is not possible in vb.
but why do you need a webbrowser showing a custom site..
you could just copy the information from this site into your program, then replacing the links with actions in your program..

Awesomium framework would be one way to do this. (http://www.awesomium.com/)
It lets you use HTML5 and CSS to make UI in .NET and in C++
I know, late answer.

Related

Want to use paragraph in vb but don't want to use labels

I am now designing window forms in vb. I am familiar with HTML design and controls in vb.net . What I wonder is whether can I design paragraphs in vb as in HTML and I don't want to use labels. Pls, your advices and experiences would be helpful for me.
I don't think there is a way to do this without a label, textbox or any other windows tool.
If your purpose is to make a design with html code, you can use a control named Web browser, create the html page and display it with this control. But I don't think it could be very helpful as the HTML page will be separate from the app, and so you will lose making full control over it.
If it is possible, creating a web project using asp.net instead of windows project, will be the best solution.

Finding out how a website is coded

I'm trying to figure out how to program a website that looks very similar to http://www.renthop.com/.
I'm new to web coding, so I'm not really sure where to start. For example, is it Java or HTML? Or both? I really like how its setup, the responsiveness and smoothness of it. I just want to make sure I start off in the right direction in terms of choosing the right language etc.
If anyone has any idea of what this is based on it would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks - KC
The server-side code is PHP, the front-end is built off of the jQuery and jQuery-UI javascript libraries and a series of third-party plugins. The final product is a dynamic HTML application.
Do you want to launch your website? If so, creating a website from HTML would only make a website on your local hard drive, not public. You're going to need a domain name and hosting to make it public.
HTML is a markup language for formatting websites, but you can still create a website out of it. Not public, as I said above.
CSS is rulesets for telling the browser how to display the HTML formatted content. It is also not a programming language in the same way HTML is, although it can be a lot more powerful.
Javascript is a programming language. You use it to make the website interactive. Get Firebug or a similar add-on for Firefox, or just right click and 'Inspect Element' in Chrome to see the javascript for more detail on what javascript does.
AJAX is an extension of javascript to get data from the web server and update the page with it, without having to refresh the page.
PHP is code commonly used server side to interact with the filesystem and databases and output HTML. You can also use python, perl, .NET and a handful of other languages/frameworks to do this.
MySQL is a database.

Faking website integration

I am working on a prototype for a project that is somewhat similar to the facebook's "like" button. Basically it's an embeddable piece of code that can integrated with any website.
I am looking for a way to fake this integration for a demo. Basically I want to show a familiar web page (like http://www.cnn.com) with my code already embedded. Since I obviously can't do the actual integration right now, I need some way of faking it.
The only thing I can think about is to use http://www.httrack.com/ to download the page I want, and then change it locally. The problem with this is that it is clear that the page is hosted locally and not on www.cnn.com.
Is there a better technique for doing this?
If you use Firefox browser, you can use Greasemoneky and with JavaScripts, embedd your content inside that page. You can eaven add events, that will open some popup windows, etc. to show action of such a script.
That is easy approach, there are ton's of examples in their forum, and good documentation, how to use it.
You can write your own userscript (i.e. greasemonkey) to modify the page on the fly.
Even though I think it's a bad idea to do this (not sure if stackoverflow allows to ask such questions), but what you can do is edit the hosts file (if you're on windows) and add a line
127.0.0.1 www.cnn.com
it means that when you visit the website cnn it will display the domain name in the browser but it will use your localhost server to display the content.

How to hide precious HTML from user eyes?

I am thinking to create an website that generates HTML through a wizard.Finally, I want to make the users to buy the generated HTML source if they like what they see.
But I don't want to let the users to steal the HTML, CSS and JS that I use to create the effect they want.
I want a technique which is immune to Firebug and Right Click -> View Page Source.
Any thoughts ?
edit: I remember something about iframes or frameset, but I'm not sure how to fool the browser and Firebug to execute the code without updating their capability of showing that source code. A popup is also a possible solution.
edit 2: html hosted in silverlight ? will you use it ?
The best thing you can do is to just obfuscate your code. Trying to hide the source is not going to work (for ex: if you disable right click-> view source that doesn't stop them from using the menu or saving the page or using a shortcut key or writing an app to stream the http request into a file and open that, etc).
Firstly, depending on what you are doing you can have the HTML code loaded through JS after the page load (AJAX).
As far as your JS goes:
Free Obfuscator
Not Free Obfuscator
In the end though, there is no stopping someone who really wants to get that source. Even obfuscated code can be rebuilt (though it's hell on wheels painful depending on how good the obfuscator is).
To really protect the sample HTML from prying eyes, you'd need to render it on the server-side and only pass image data to the client. If you want the user to be able to interact with the sample as if it were a normal Web page, you'll also need to send their pointer and keyboard inputs to the server and update the displayed image when necessary. At that point, though, you're basically making an HTTP-based version of VNC. This is definitely possible, but I don't think it will be easy, and I doubt there are any existing software packages to let you do this. If I were you, I'd rethink my business model a bit.
Sending XSL-templated XML to the browser may be enough fool some, and it will work more or less the same in many modern browsers including IE6 (maybe even 5.5).
But really, trying to hide the HTML code isn't going to work if anyone halfway serious wants to get it.
I am thinking to create an website that generates HTML through a wizard.
Finally, I want to make the users to buy the generated HTML source if they like what they see.
If this is what you need you might consider the possibility of creating a preview of the page as an image, and provide the download of the source only after the user agreed and paid. There is no magic way to let a browser display a code that you can't see.
You can make a video, showing the functionality and upload the same, which may help users to view / feel it.

How can I save a webpage as an image in my rails app?

In my rails app I have a need to save some webpages and display them to the user as images. For example, how would I save www.google.com as an image?
There is a command line utility called CutyCapt that is using the WebKit-Rendering engine to render HTML-Pages into various image formats. Maybe this is for you?
http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net/
Prohibitively difficult to do in pure Ruby, so you'd want to use an external service for this. Browsershots does it, for example, and it looks like they have an api, although I haven't used it myself. Maybe someone else can chime in with alternative but similar services.
You'll also want to read up on delayed_job or something similar, to make sure you're accessing those page images as a background task and that it doesn't interfere with your actual application.
You can't do it easily (probably can't do it at all).
Each page is just a text - html data. The view you want to make an image of is a rendered page. Browser renders the page using tonns of techniques like html parsing, javascript parsing, css parsing, font rendering, etc.. To make the screenshot of google page - you would need to do all the rendering somewhere in memory and then take a screenshot of rendered page.
That task is almost impossible (there is nothing fully impossible).
If you are really eager to donate tonns of time to accomplish that task - you should do this steps:
1) Find some opensource rendering engine. Firefox would do.
2) Find some way to communicate between ruby-on-rails and that engine.
3) Wire it all together and see the results.
However, I see steps 1 and 2 as nearly impossible.
Firefox addon:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146/