Since I read Google's message that NPAPI will no longer be supported by the end of 2014, I've been looking for an alternative. The issue is that we currently use a custom made Kinect Browserplugin which we use to control the browser with JS and control Unity Web Player games with your body.
Without NPAPI support it simply won't work anymore and our work will be lost. Google gives NaCl as an alternative but this doesn't support interaction with hardware.
The main question I have is: How to use the Kinect in a webbased platform and crossbrowser?
Currently we have the "normal" Kinect and the Kinect One from the closed beta working in the browser and Unity Web Player.
Please share your thoughts on a solution.
I apologize in advance for just spewing out links without actually supplying much information, but as far as I know there are no known good alternatives.
If I was in your position, I would have a look at the chrome.usb API or possibly, depending on your use case, node-kinect.
Here's a good general resource/discussion of NPAPI alternatives: Browser Plugins in a post NPAPI world
Probably your best approach at this point is to continue using NPAPI except in Chrome, and in Chrome use native messaging. Of course, Chrome has made it as difficult as they can to install the host that you'll be connecting to, so it'll be a pain and you'll have to install the extension and the host seperately, but there you go.
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I'm making a game with HTML/CSS/Javascript because it's the code I'm most comfortable with at the moment. I'm only really doing this as an exercise in game development and plan to learn C# later. But for now that's what I'm using, and I have a question about it.
Obviously when making a website, you want your website to be compatible with all web browsers equally. Right now, I'm using Chrome to test/debug my game, and I've decided to develop this game with Chrome in mind. But not everybody has Chrome, and not everyone would want to download it in order to play my game.
Is there a way to run an HTML/CSS/Javascript file in a Google Chrome "environment" without having the actual browser installed? Just it's code engine and none of the rest of the browser.
I've been reading about their V8 Javascript engine that they use in Chrome, and am wondering if that is part of the answer I'm looking for. What I'd like to do is include this "engine" in an installer with my game files and have it install like any other game.
Hopefully this makes sense. This may not be possible/exist, but if someone knows something I don't or an point me in the right direction, that'd be amazing. Thanks!
You could look into Node-webkit which essentially allows you to write desktop applications in html/css/js. When you distribute your game along with your node webkit executable, it is always run in the same environment. You can see some cool examples on their demos and examples page.
Usually a common path to convert web application to native desktop applications is to use a "thin" browser as app container and ship it.
A lot of current applications out there are using this trick (Spotify, Slack, etc...) and it works pretty well.
I've read of some people using the CocoonJS game engine framework and successfully ship it with this techniques.
To most famous wrappers, that I know are node-webkit or electron (AKA atom-shell).
Once you include your game in either one of those you can just "compile" it (it is not a real compile, but just to give you an idea) and ship it: with some tricks it is also possible to publish it in the Mac/Win app stores.
In case you want to focus on mobile instead, there are similar frameworks but I don't really know which are the most common.
Note: if you're using fancy WebGL or very advanced stuff these tools may have some issues sometimes.
So essentially you want to install the JS engine to use it with any browser? In this case, the answer is: nope. Browsers act different, they don't have a standard interface, nor have this "swapping" capability in mind.
In case you'd be asking for an embedded browser inside an app... well, isn't that worse than installing Chrome? You may embed webkit/V8, but it's a hard way and you'd know programming.
So simple answer is: you'd make it compatible for at least the evergreen browsers (Chrome / Firefox mainly). Or reduce your target to webkit based only browsers (or in your case V8, i.e. Chrome, Chromium and the forks).
If you want that your game is only for chrome, because you read V8 documentation, you can create it as an extension. There'sn't other way to install your JS, because browser interpret javascript, not compile it. And the docs you need is found at: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/getstarted
Recently after the latest chrome update version 42, NPAPI support was disabled by default in Chrome thus effectively dropping support for Silverlight, Java, Facebook Video and other similar NPAPI based plugins.As per the chromium developer docs we can temporarily re-enable NPAPI by overriding via
chrome://flags/#enable-npapi(Enable NPAPI). However this option will be there only till Sept 2015.They have also mentioned that this wait is for mission-critical plugins to make transition.
We are using an enterprise plugin and we have some dependency on chrome , to make the transition we have to re-implement the plugin.
What are the things we need to do for re-implementing and make it work for chrome, guys please shade some light on this.
It really depends on what exactly your plugin needs to do; FireBreath 2 is nearly ready and supports plugins in Chrome via native messaging, however:
For Chrome you must install an extension as well as installing the binary (the binary installer can trigger the extension install, but must be confirmed by the user)
There is no direct drawing model, so you'd need to use a javascript layer to draw and access it from the plugin
All APIs of FireBreath 2 plugins are now asynchronous.
FireBreath 2 is not quite ready, though you're welcome to help us get it ready.
Other options include Native Client, which has much better drawing support but is sandboxed, and Emscripten which allows you to compile C++ to javascript and is shockingly fast, but is also of course sandboxed. You could also write your own native messaging host to do what you need.
As #smorgan says, there is no one solution that is a drop-in replacement.
There is no general-purpose replacement that can do everything NPAPI plugins could do, so without knowing what your plugin does there's no way to answer that question.
You should look at the last section of the deprecation guide, and see if your plugin fits into one of the categories there. If not, you should post a specific question about what you want to accomplish.
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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.
Is it possible writing a cross-platform desktop application with XHTML (or HTML), CSS and JavaScript?
If the answer is yes, how to run this application? Should I run it with a browser like Firefox?
Note: Currently Windows supports HTML Application.
It seems that what you're looking for is the Open Web Apps
HTA is really Old technology.
Try tools like Titanium (Appcelerator). They are tools, which render HTML content inside an APP. So, from outside, you will be running an executable but inside , it is loading a HTML file.
Same principle is being used in many apps now a days. Facebook for android is a best example
If client-side JavaScript, and/or HTML/CSS hackery accomplishes the task you wish it to, yes, and with a user agent like Firefox, indeed.
Yes. With HTML5.
The other answer's solutions are great, but generally they assume that the user is connected to the internet to have a server-side that handles the data.
But it's possible to use Open Web Apps (as ZER0 suggested) with HTML5, which has a lot of support for offline web apps.
Pay attention to it, though. Even HTML5 assumes that eventually the user will have some sort of internet connection, and offline functionalities are seen as a "cache". So, I'm not sure that this solution is enough for every requirement, because I don't know how much space HTML5 provides to offline applications
I was wondering if any of you know some libraries that will help/improve the response of IE >= 7 for a website that I have to modify.
I already loaded the modernizr library, but I know that there are some libraries ment to help IE behave as a modern browser should. So, what do you recommend? What options do I have?
I'm really sick of spending hours trying to fix a 1 thing for X Version of IE.
I don't think it's that simple. I don't know of a single library that makes them all act "normal". A few I use are:
Modernizr can help with new html5 elements in older browsers
jQuery for cross browser DOM manipulation
jQuery UI for cross browser theming
But there is no silver bullet library that works everywhere all the time. Sometimes you will have to adjust the UI based on the browser capabilities. One common method of doing so is called progressive enhancement.
Progressive enhancement is a strategy for web design that emphasizes
accessibility, semantic HTML markup, and external stylesheet and
scripting technologies. Progressive enhancement uses web technologies
in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content
and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet
connection, while also providing an enhanced version of the page to
those with more advanced browser software or better bandwidth.
Check out ie7.js http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/ its not perfect, but it can help with some issues.
You can tell users they need to install Google Chrome Frame https://developers.google.com/chrome/chrome-frame/
"Google Chrome Frame is an open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome's open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer"
I use CSS3Pie. This is a .htc file you place on the server which provides poly-fills for many CSS3 styling elements such as border-radius, text shadows, box shadows and gradients. It's quite handy in that is solves many of the same problems for IE8 and IE9 as well.
It can a be a little tricky to set up in that you sometimes need to define a MIME type on your server for .htc and you have to ensure that you set the path in your CSS file to where the .htc file resides, other than that, it's great.
I don't think there's a general fix-all solution for your problem.
I recommend trying this tool called dynaTrace AJAX Edition (http://www.compuware.com/application-performance-management/ajax-performance-testing.html), the free version is more than enough to help you.
What you do is:
Start a session and choose your IE browser
Open and click through your web application
Close the browser
Double-click the "Timeline" on dynaTrace.
You'll see a breakdown of your site's performance so you can identify which Javascript is the problem.
You'll also see if the slowdown is simply because your loading external resources which are unavailable - something which I've found IE to handle poorly.