The question may sound a little odd but I'm currently in a project where this could help solving many problems.
Is it somehow possible to embed an .exe into any web browser? I don't want to run the program directly in the browser (would be major security risk I guess), I just want the window of the .exe being embeded into a browser page. So the .exe is running locally on the system but instead of a "windows window" I have it displayed in the web browser. Think of it like VNC, I only need my "video" and the possiblity of user interaction (the program is an interactive 3D visualization).
I don't have much hope for this being possible so I'm also glad about any suggestion that would allow me to display web pages while my program is running in the same (fullscreen) window. Doesn't necessarily has to be a "real" browser but should allow basic stuff like HTML, CSS etc.
This kinda sound more like a SuperUser question rather than a StackOverflow one.
Anyway, I have a number of possible solutions for you:
You could use a second monitor.
Maybe all you really need is setting the "exe" window to "always be on top".
I could swear that used to be an option in the Windows' default Task Manager in the earlier versions of Windows but I use a 3rd-party piece of software for around 10 years now for that and many other purposes, however there are many such options to be found online.
Can't risk endorsing the one I use here, since it tends to spook people into thinking I'm trying to infect them with HAX.
In case you have the sources for the "exe" you are running, have you considered going the other way around and building a web renderer into your desktop program? Something like WebKit, Servo and suchlike.
Or you could make the program listen on a port to network packets you can be sending from the page you'd have to make — like a remote control.
Then there's also the cgi-bin option if you run the server.
And, to see what you're controlling, you might wanna stream it to some streaming platform (if you get it to stream an obscured window), embed their player widget in an iframe on your custom local webpage and keep the website you are reaching in another frame.
Maybe even code the program to read XInput and stream it through Mixer using its MixPlay feature to control it.
Hope any of this helps.
Related
Per the title, I am looking for a tool or some sort of initiative that's already been undertaken by other developers to simply grab data off of websites so one can navigate them without looking at them in the browser. I am fully aware of how most pages work so what I would like to do is just look at the data that's being pulled from them per windows technology that's already (hopefully) been written. Does this make sense? Here is an example of what I would like to see in a tool:
a windows interface that gives me data about a webpage (menus, submenus,
button names/captions, etc...
be able to execute transactions on those pages by specifying what to do
through the tool's interface (click button, download image, etc..)
does anyone know of a tool out there to do such things?
The closest "program" that comes to mind is
WWW::Mechanize
Advertised as
Handy web browsing in a Perl object
This can in fact be used on Windows, however you
will need Perl.
I would like to have some info about apple's in-app purchases option.
I can't seem to find any place where they are explaining what is actually allowed. Becaus i wanted to make a digital bookstore with interactive books in asctionscript and offer the user interactive books (seperate swf files) via in-app purchases but apparently it is not allowed to have any code in your swf file, so that option is out of the window (btw if anyone knows of another option instead of swf files, please let me know).
Then have have thought of maybe starting in cocos2d but again i have no idea how i would distribute separate interactive books to the users. What are the options here?
So my questions are: what is allowed with in-app purchase, how can i offer interactive books (with posibility to click on elements and view animations etc) through in-app purchases.
And secondly and more important:
Would it be possible to do it via as3.0? Preferably i would like to do it through actionscript but can anyone tell me if its possible? Can i offer the user interactive books with elements that are pressable and animations etc through in-app purchases? And having all the books inside the application and unlocking them is not an option. I want to be able to provide books separatly.
Definitely on the right track,
I think if you are looking to do an animated books series or something that's more interactive that a simple text format you should be fine using In-App Purchases for this. You'll only get in trouble if you're duplicating something iBooks can already provide.
You'll need an ANE to give you access to the InApp Purchases API from AS3, there are a few out there and I'll shamelessly plug mine:
http://distriqt.com/native-extensions#in-app-purchase
The major problem you'll have is actually distributing the additional content, as you may not be able to load in a swf and play it in a compiled iOS AIR application as you would a normal flash/AIR application. You'll have to do some research and see if you can create a player that just loads images and animation sequences (in xml or other).
Good luck
1) You can't play swf files on the iPhone. Not without converting them to HTML5 or video. Which probably makes them non-interactive (not sure about HTML5).
2) Downloading any executable code to an iOS device is out of the question. There are some gray areas, for example downloaded Lua scripts which only contain data but due to their nature are executable code. It's a risk to do something like that, instead of just downloading XML or pure text/binary files.
3) Apple never tells you exactly what is allowed. They tell you what is not allowed, and even there they remain vague. There are always some gray areas and Apple reserves the right to define whether something in the grey area is acceptable to them or not. If you think your app is in the gray area, you need to have a backup plan in case Apple won't like it, or removes the app because they didn't initially find something wrong with it but later changed their mind.
4) Read the iOS Developer Program License Agreement and the App Store Review Guidelines. You may need to re-read some sentences because it's somewhat lawyer speak, though not really that hard to understand.
5) There are no guarantees. Best option: look at apps like yours and see if you can find your payment model implemented by other apps. If you find several such apps, it's most likely ok to do that. If you can't find any app that does something even remotely like you want to do it, beware.
6) I think you're on the wrong path. Use iBooks. Problem solved.
Of course the page will be on my pc not from a remote server. I just want to create a launch page for my most used software. I find windows program start menu too much a hassle and cannot find any freeware that does really a good job.
Don't tell it's not possible because I had already done this in the past with javascript referencing a file:/// but I don't remember what's the exact syntax.
Will it work in Google Chrome ?
If you use file:///, then the browser will download the file. Even IE's option of "running" the file is really just downloading it to a temp directory first, then running it. So no browser truly just runs an exe, as browsers weren't designed with that in mind.
You could run a local web server with a little bit of code that does "when user clicks this link, run this program". It would be the web server running the program, not the browser, but it'd have the same effect.
I'm writing a flash app using the open source tools. I would like to load a data file in to the app and capture a screenshot of the stage on the server. The only part that seems mysterious is running the app on the server. In fact, I don't even care if it's the same app running on the server and in the browser--if I can use the flash stage and drawing routines to produce an image server-side, I'm happy. If I have to delve in to flex, fine. Right now I'm having problems finding any starting point at all.
I gather Adobe has some commercial products that may fit the bill, but I'd like to stick with open source, apache, and linux. I know this is probably possible with haxe/neko, but I'd like to use more mainstream tools if possible. Am I asking too much?
EDIT/CLARIFICATION: Many thanks for the responses so far, but I think I've been a bit muddy in my description. I've already written the actual stage-grabbing stuff using the same PNGEncoder class as was suggested. The problem is in actually running the swf on the server side. I don't want to let the client take the screen shot itself, because this opens up the possibility of the client maliciously submitting a screenshot which does not correspond to what is on the stage, that is, I don't want users uploading porn. If I could run the the actionscript code on the server, then I could generate the screenshot from my data files and be sure that the screenshot matches the data, but I have no idea how to run the actionscript or swf on the server.
Swfs run on a client computer, not on the server. The only way it would run on the server would be if you set up a special environment on your server so that it ran a web browser, opened up the page and ran the swf. But even then it would have no correlation to what an external user was doing.
You'll need to run it client side. As far as your security concerns, the best way to get rid of those is to have the php writing the actual image only accept an encrypted form of the image file, which the flash can encrypt. That way they can't simply use the PHP file to upload whatever image they want unless they happened to encrypt it the exact same that your swf did. Next encrypt the swf itself (I recommend SWF Shield) so that a potential hacker cannot read the code to know how to encrypt the image.
We just completed a similar project where we rendered JPGs from SWFs that loaded dynamic data, we used IECapt
Did you try actionscript print commands?
Try and look at this:
http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/4312.html
I know this question is long dead, but I had a similar problem and ended up writing a script using applescript + ui scripting to grab the inside area of the preview window of the standalone flash player in OS X. You can grab it off github here.
How about swfdec-thumbnailer from the swfdec-gnome package? It's used to create thumbnails of SWF files but can accept arbitrarily large resolutions with the -s argument.
EDIT: swfdec-gnome has been deprecated in Ubuntu 10.10 in favour of Gnash. Here is a guide on taking screenshots with Gnash (note that certain features like gradients are not yet properly supported).
I was wondering, how would you go about writing an application that basically houses other applications inside of it?
The reason I ask is that I'd love to build an app that 'conquers' my current explosion of open windows. I've used virtual window managers before and they're nice and all, but I could do so many things with an app like I mention.
Alternatively does anyone know of an easy to use/intuitive application for confining windows to 'regions' of your screen? Something like GridMove, but more intuitive and less flakey?
You could create a window, then you could enumerate all Windows that have the style WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW, select the ones belonging to the application you want to house, then call SetParent on the window, setting the parent to the window you created. You could also use FindWindow to find a window by its title.
All the windows inside the house can never leave the house window's boundaries, but they still follow all the same rules. You can still click-and-drag windows etc.
The problem here is that if the application inside the house creates another window, its parent will most likely be the desktop window, not the house window.
I think what you are describing is generally called a Window Manager. The Windows shell is itself a (poor) example of a window manager. You might want to investigate some alternatives. I know there has been some success in getting KDE ported to Windows, so you might want to look at the current state of that project.
Microsoft also provides a PowerToy (IIRC) that gives you virtual desktop support, but it's really bad. Have you considered just getting a second monitor (and perhaps a utility such as MultiMon Taskbar to get a second task bar on the other monitor)?
Here is code that uses FindWindow / SetParent to create a tabbed view combining different applications Jedi Window Dock
I also wrote an application (not free, not open source) that takes this idea a bit further called WindowTabs.
The only caution I would give you is that not all applications like being parented. If your writing .NET, there are some "Gotcha's" there (which is why WindowTabs doesn't use parenting).
Also, in general, once you do a SetParent, you are joining the threads at a Win32 level meaning that if one hangs, all of them are toast.
Multiple Document Interfaces could help you out.
Despite the multiple down votes, I stand by this answer because the OP never stated the source of the "explosion of windows." I've seen business apps that open several windows at a time (or users that would open several instances "to save time") where MDI would've been a nice feature for them.
If the OP is a power user who has a need for another window manager because he runs many apps at once, then this really doesn't apply. It also isn't the problem I'd be addressing -- it would be finding a way to have fewer windows.
In general, there's always a VM.
It may be overkill or it may not work depending on the specifics of what you're trying to do. But VMWare will let you copy/paste files and text between your VM and local machine, so it's not that far off of being a true window manager. The system requirements aren't even that outrageous, considering how much memory iTunes + a typical browser eat up.