I work developing advanced browser based applications, using technologies like WebGL to create training and simulator tools.
Is it possible for such applications to access and interact with external devices connected to the Windows/Mac? If so what options are there?
A good example is: say we're creating a simulator for a surgical robot which is operated using a special joystick-type control. In a desktop application we could create a controller which has USB (serial port in the old days) and write custom code to interrogate this. But I don't know if browsers have any way to do the same.
In the days of plugins you could write a C++ plugin which acted as a bridge to the browser sandbox but this is not really an option in modern browsers.
What options exist, please? Our target is primarily Chrome though it doesn't have to be.
Related
I have a WebApp built using HTML5, JS, Jquery - but I'd now like to build some Bluetooth functionality into it in order to transfer data to another BT enabled device.
I've downloaded the Bluetooth Dev Kit and read a lot of the papers, but seems that the tools available are for Native Apps.
Can anyone advise if there are BT Group approved libraries or add ins that I could use for the purpose.
Thanks
Phil
In practise, in 2016: No.
Support for the Web Bluetooth specification is practically nil.
Only Blink based browsers support it, and even then it is locked behind a user preference that defaults to off.
I was searching for how to use swf file in android and most of the answer suggested me to use webview and an simple html file.
Now i think We can easily put css and javascript files in asset folder and then we can use them in an html5 code.
Looking at the power of HTML5, This will make app development for a web designer very easy job !
I just want to know that is it good to use this approach to build a good user interface in android ? Are there any technical pros/cons behind it ? will i miss some features provided by android ?
There are a lot of frameworks that allow you to write native android applications using HTML/CSS/JavaScript only. Here some of them :
PhoneGap
Cordova
Titanium
I've never used any of them, so I can't say if it's good or bad idea to write android apps this way, but here you can find a good session about it HTML5 versus Android.
There are pros & cons of using cross platforms. As per my point of view you shouldn't go for loading of everything in WebView.
I still recommend you native app approach because of following points :
WebView is one of the UI control in Android SDK. So, it will have
limitation of memory size and working with CPU utilization. So, you
might face performance issues in some devices.
As you know in older era we were used to work with desktop apps and after that everything is shifted to web-application.
It was
possible only because our browser(s) gets more features for e.g. more
memory area, CPU access, threading, individual Processing (like
google chrome) etc...
in-short, web browsers gets more smart and get treated as separate application. Now a days web-application can have mostly similar
performance as desktop apps. So, everything is now shifted to
web-application development.
This era will come in to Mobile development in later stage. but currently we are in middle stage of Mobile development and Cross platform development. So until and unless Web-View control of any platform (iOS / Android) gets more powerful, we can not totally relay on that.
I Hope I explain it properly :)
I want to demo a web page being used to interact with a physical object in the same proximity as a web-enabled device (Mac/Windows/Linux laptop). In order to do this, I want to create my own window.bluetooth object in Javascript that will provide an interface to the host device's Bluetooth controller via the Serial Port Profile. For now it's just a demo, but I might want to develop a generic API to abstract Bluetooth drivers in Javascript.
I'm not particularly concerned with portability or generic solutions at this point. I just want to see if it would work on my laptop with a device I'm building using a BlueSMiRF Silver modem. I know Google Chrome extensions are capable of injecting Javascript into every page the user visits, and NPAPI is capable of compiling native OS code into a form that can communicate with Javascript. It looks like someone has done something vaguely similar before with slightly more specific applications.
My question is, is a Chrome extension with NPAPI the best way to do this? Alternatives could be Flash or a Java applet, but those are kind of 1996 solutions. Here are the metrics I use to evaluate a solution:
Feasibility. Is it possible?
Ease of development. How many lines of code would it take?
Leverage. Does anything else out there already do something similar?
For those of you thinking it's preposterous for the browser to monitor lower-level network status, it's already been done with Wi-Fi.
So not sure if this would be the correct place to ask these but I know I could perhaps get some answers.
I am getting into Meteor and now would like to make some desktop apps. I was going to go the route of just making a native Mac app. But then I found the app wunderlist and its open source making use of the tidesdk.
Anyways I was hoping to get some feedback just in general about these frameworks (pros/cons etc). I don't really have a conceptual understanding of what they do. (or what the main difference between the two is).
I notice you can do routing in them. How is this working exactly? Because there is no URLs or client/server side.
Another thing I was wondering is if it would be possible to use MeteorJS on the desktop in a similar way?
Thanks.
Working with TideSDK is quite easy. We are working to make the experience great for developers. You are essentially just creating an HTML5 app in a special Resources folder. In most cases you can drop an HTML5 app directly into the Resources folder, point to the index.html using TideSDK's configuration and have it running in minutes. TideSDK can be used to run clients, servers, processes, and workers. I tend to work with frameworks such as backbone.js where routing is baked into a single page app.
At the core of TideSDK is WebKit, the core technology that powers the Safari and Chrome web browsers. We use three different ports of WebKit in TideSDK, one to reach each platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). On OSX, we can also use the native WebKit. The APIs of TideSDK provide native UI capabilities (that we are enhancing over time). These include native windows, system trays, menus, and dialogs. You can also interact with the clipboard. We have networking and database capabilities, system notifications, and more. We patch Webkit to allow the interpretation of python, php or ruby in the DOM in script tags and are able to bridge objects between languages. Our API's really allow your to reach the resources of your system including interacting with its filesystem.
It would be fun to run meteor in TideSDK. It is currently possible to run node.js within TideSDK using an appropriate startup process so I cannot see an issue running meteor so that it can run client and server within an app.
If you need your apps to reach Apple's AppStore, TideSDK is the only framework that I am aware of that has this potential. Competitive frameworks use ports of WebKit that are not native to the Mac such as the Chrome port (appjs) or the QT port (Sencha Ion). Apple's scan of an app based on these ports will reveal the use of "private APIs". Therefore, you would could not enter the AppStore marketplace with an app based on these. TideSDK is different and can use the native WebKit implementation on OSX. More about this capability will be revealed in the upcoming TideSDK-1.4.0 release. Our upgraded WebKit will also bring the HTML5 capabilities right up to date with the trunk of WebKit. Many of our users are waiting for this important update.
With WebKit eliminated as a barrier to the AppStore, the last issue facing a developer is Apple's sandboxing and entitlement to the resources of the system. We are looking at possible solutions to aid developers with sandboxing requirements. Some apps will be suitable for sandboxing and others will not. That said, if your goal is AppStore compliance, you will need to work with restrictions Apple has in place. I hope this helps.
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First, I'm not interested in doing this professionally. I am a web developer, a coworker of mine recently left for Spotify and said he will be working mostly in JavaScript for the Spotify Desktop app. He said it uses "Chrome frame" and everything inside is done like a web app (HTML/JS/CSS).
As a web developer who never built anything for Desktop, this is great news. If I can use the technologies I already know and implement them inside some sort of a "frame" and still be able to build a windows or better yet cross platform app.
I know I didn't mention anything about the database, but even a simple hello world desktop app with web technologies would be great to get going.
So how does one go about this? Exactly what do I need/need to know?
You may start with Titanium for desktop dev. Also you may have a look at Chromium Embedded Framework. It's basically a web browser control based on chromium.
It's written in C++ so you can do all the low level OS stuff you want(Growl, tray icons, local file access, com ports, etc) in your container app, and then all the application logic and gui in html/javascript. It allows you to intercept any http request to either serve local resources or perform some custom action. For example, a request to http://localapp.com/SetTrayIconState?state=active could be intercepted by the container and then call the C++ function to update the tray icon.
It also allows you to create functions that can be called directly from JavaScript.
It's very difficult to debug JavaScript directly in CEF. There's no support for anything like Firebug.
You may also try AppJS.com (Helps to build Desktop Applications. for Linux, Windows and Mac using HTML, CSS and JavaScript)
Also, as pointed out by #Clint, the team at brackets.io (Adobe) created an awesome shell using Chromium Embedded Framework that makes it much easier to get started. It is called the brackets shell: github.com/adobe/brackets-shell Find out more about it here: clintberry.com/2013/html5-desktop-apps-with-brackets-shell
NW.js
(Previously known as node-webkit)
I would suggest NW.js if you are familiar with Node or experienced with JavaScript.
NW.js is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js.
Features
Apps written in modern HTML5, CSS3, JS and WebGL
Complete support for Node.js APIs and all its third party modules.
Good performance: Node and WebKit run in the same thread: Function calls are made straightforward; objects are in the same heap and can just reference each other
Easy to package and distribute apps
Available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
You can find the NW.js repo here, and a good introduction to NW.js here. If you fancy learning Node.js I would recommend this SO post with a lot of good links.
Awesomium makes it easy to use HTML UI in your C++ or .NET app
Update
My previous answer is now outdated. These days you would be crazy not to look into using Electron for this. Many popular desktop apps have been developed on top of it.
NOTE: AppJS is deprecated and not recommended anymore.
Take a look at NW.js instead.
It seems the solutions for HTML/JS/CSS desktop apps are in no short supply.
One solution I have just come across is TideSDK: http://www.tidesdk.org/, which seems very promising, looking at the documentation.
You can develop with Python, PHP or Ruby, and package it for Mac, Windows or Linux.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Spotify desktop client is just a Webkit-based browser. Of course it exposes specific additional functionality, but it's only able to run JS and render HTML/CSS because it has a JS engine as well as a Chromium rendering engine. This does not help you with coding a client-side web-app and deploying to multiple platforms.
What you're looking for is similar to Sencha Touch - a framework that allows for HTML5 apps to be natively deployed to iOS, Android and Blackberry devices. It basically acts as an intermediary between certain API calls and device-specific functionality available.
I have no experience with appcelerator, bit it appears to be doing exactly that - and get very favourable reviews online. You should give it a go (unless you wanted to go back to 1999 and roll with MS HTA ;)
I know for there's Fluid and Prism (there are others, that's the one I used to use) that let you load a website into what looks like a standalone app.
In Chrome, you can create desktop shortcuts for websites. (you do that from within Chrome, you can't/shouldn't package that with your app) Chrome Frame is different:
Google Chrome Frame is a plug-in designed for Internet Explorer based
on the open-source Chromium project; it brings Google Chrome's open
web technologies to Internet Explorer.
You'd need to have some sort of wrapper like that for your webapp, and then the rest is the web technologies you're used to. You can use HTML5 local storage to store data while the app is offline. I think you might even be able to work with SQLite.
I don't know how you would go about accessing OS specific features, though. What I described above has the same limitations as any "regular" website. Hopefully this gives you some sort of guidance on where to start.
You can build Javascript apps with Adobe AIR… http://www.adobe.com/products/air.html
CEF offers lot of flexibility and options for customisation. But if the intent is to develop quickly node-webkit is also a good option. Node-web kit also offers ability to call node modules directly from DOM.
If there aren't any native modules to integrate Node-Webkit can offer better mileage. With native modules C/C++ or even C# it is better with CEF.