At the moment I have a custom ActiveX plugin that drops down the usual yellow bar with the install button if the user doesn't have it. When they finish installing, however, I need the page to automatically refresh. Is there a way to detect that the plugin has been successfully installed that isn't constantly polling for the plugin's presence. That is to say, not doing this:
function checkForPlugin() {
try {
control = new ActiveXObject('Object.One');
//refresh
} catch (e) {
setTimeout("checkForPlugin()" ,2000);
}
}
This doesn't seem terribly professional and I'm curious if there is a better approach I could be taking. Come to think of it...I'm not exactly sure how I'd refresh there anyway, does anyone have insight on that as well? Thanks.
Update -- I have it working using the above method and even solved the refresh issue. I'm really not thrilled with this as an implementation though. It just feels wrong to leave the browser sitting there constantly polling in the background until it gets what it wants. It's not terrible I guess but I wish there was a more clean approach. Does anyone have any ideas?
You could have your control fire an event and listen for it.
I think, capturing ActiveX install finish event is a kind of misconception.
Basically web pages run in single thread. There are no asynchronous processing such as a background installing.
In a life time of a web page, you will have the already installed ActiveX control or nothing. If control = new ActiveXObject throws, never you can instantiate the ActiveX control in this life time of the page.
That is, if the ActiveX control is not installed already you need to refresh the page to use the newly installed ActiveX control. This refresh is done automatically by the IE.
While the two answers given are perfectly valid, neither solution will really work within my time constraint or implementation. I thank you both for answering but ultimately I went with as described in my question.
Related
I'm working on Chrome extension which needs to perform an action just before Chrome closes. Is there any method like chrome.window.onClose.addListener(...), or chrome.runtime.onClose.addListener(...) to ensure that something will be done and then chrome will close itself?
I've been struggling with this problem for two weeks. Here are the options for potential solutions that I've found, but they didn't work.
My investigation results:
Using function: chrome.runtime.onSuspend.addListener(...) - I don't know why, but it doesn't work at all for me. For example, I've tried to write a callback for this event, which tries to add hardcoded data to the indexed DB, but it doesn't add it. Description of this method even says that the callback is not guaranteed to be completed. OnSuspend documentation
Sent to the event page just before it is unloaded. This gives the extension opportunity to do some cleanup. Note that since the page is unloading, any asynchronous operations started while handling this event are not guaranteed to complete.
Chrome working in a background - with this option my extensions seems to work, but... only on Windows older than Windows 10. I've checked few options and on my other computer, which has Windows 7 installed, processes connected to Chrome are closing more slowly, which gives time for my extension to perform necessary tasks. Unfortunately, Windows 10 kills all the processes much faster. I've check option "continue running background apps when google chrome is closed", but it doesn't change anything. I've also enabled flag "#enable-push-api-background-mode", it hasn't helped either.
Keep Chrome running in the background on Win10, Enable flag to keep Chrome processes running
chrome.app.window.current().onClosed - I've found a similar question on Stack Overflow, and one of the answers was the code mentioned above. The problem is when I try to type chrome.app.win... inside console, it doesn't show any suggestions both in background script and content script. Google's documentation doesn't mention any permission that I've to add inside my manifest.json to get access to this functionality.Stack Overflow similar question, Google's documentation about chrome.app
Methods build in web browser - I've thought that method window.onclose might be useful in my case. I've performed the same test as for chrome.runtime.onSuspend, but the result was exactly the same. Documentation
I've stuck and haven't got any idea how to solve my problem. Maybe I missed something important? Hope you will help me.
I would like to be able to know when arbitrary JavaScript successfully executes a command in a web browser. The medium doesn't matter, it could be a log, stack trace, event signal, it just has to be something that can be programmatically analyzed.
I've thought about this problem for some time now and I have not been able to come up with an adequate solution. I'm no expert with JavaScript though, so I'm wondering what ideas you have?
Since you'll probably be wondering why, it's just something I'm very interested in.
Any input is appreciated. Can you help me?
EDIT: I've investigated using something like Firebug to monitor JavaScript functions, however I wasn't able to determine if Firebug can be run programmatically on a simulated Web Browser (like a web-browser control in ASP.NET, which is what I'm currently using.) Does anyone know if it can?
You can use the profiler of Firebug.
Go to the console tab and click Profile. The profiler starts and all the javascript actions are "logged" till you click Profile again. Then you get the list of javascript functions that were executed in this interval.
A similar feature is available in most modern browsers' consoles.
Source: See/Log which javascript function is being executed by the browser
The firefox browser could be used in asp .net using the selenium web driver and it also provide the ability to access all details from a web page. see the document and download api code and integrate it in your project its very easy to integrate using its help.
http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/
Recently, we found that Firefox had made a change towards plugins, such that the user will be temporarily blocked from running them if they are not using the latest version. Our site requires Flash to play sound and interact with the user's webcam/microphone, so we need to do whatever we can to ensure they're not getting these warnings.
One way suggested to me is to create a small Flash control, and wait for it to tell Javascript that it's been initialized. If not (and the user is using Firefox) then they are taken to a page prompting them to update. This may work, but I worry about its reliability, and about running it on every page in our site.
Alternatively, I've been researching a way to use Javascript to detect versions, without making a Flash control. I not only need the user's current version of Flash, but also the version Firefox will expect - and I haven't found an autonomous way of doing so. I don't want an admin to have to change a small value each time Adobe releases a new version. Does anyone have any advice how I could find Flash's latest available version, or an alternate way to solve my problem?
I recommend you have a look at SWFOject and the Express Install option which should ease upgrading considerably.
I just noticed someone upvoting this question, so I thought that I would provide my eventual solution, which I think reduced the impact of a recent issue where Firefox blocked the most recent edition of Flash, pending Adobe's fix.
Basically, I went with a variation on the second paragraph in my question. It does not direct the user to a new page; instead, it opens a dialog over the current page that explains it's having issues communicating with Flash. (It does not specifically say "Your Flash is out of date" because this can also happen if the browser is hiding flash under a Yes/No user dialog). It also contains a small fake flash object, with the idea being that if the browser wants to display a security warning, accept prompt, etc., it can do it inside that space.
The dialog goes away on its own if said Flash control ends up making its callback to JavaScript. It also installs a variable under sessionStorage so we don't bother checking for it again (Flash takes enough time on some computers that you might see the dialog for a split second).
I am working on a solution that loads SharePoint pages in a copy of IE. When the page finishes loading an event is triggered that executes some code in the application that wraps IE.
Now this all works fine and well, until JavaScript is turned off in the browser, a requirement for this solution (Don't ask). Naturally I don't expect the out of the box SharePoint user interface to be fully functional without JavaScript enabled, but although the web page is rendered correctly IE's progress bar never finishes the loading process. As a result my code is never triggered.
Try it for yourself.
Open Internet Explorer.
Disable JavaScript access for the Internet zone.
Navigate to a public SharePoint site such as this one.
Watch in amazement how the progress bar never finishes.
Does anyone have any idea about what is going on or if there are any workarounds?
Answering my own question.
After extensive testing there doesn't appear to be a solution to this problem.
I think the issue that you are having is related to the specific SharePoint site. They are more than likely loading something else in the background that is not part of the base install of SharePoint.
We have some internal sites running on SharePoint and I am able to get the progress bar to completely load with JavaScript disabled on all of them and they are standard installs.
I don't really have an answer as to what the other site might be loading to cause this, but my guess is that it is something that is not necessarily related to SharePoint.
One of my clients has Norton 360 installed on his computer, and it's interfering with the javascript in my web pages. Not all JS, just some.
Simple things like
<a href="page.html" onclick="somefunc(); return false;">
don't work. Also using jQuery to attach on onclick event to an a tag doesn't work either:
// doesn't work
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#old_trans_link").click(viewOldTrans);
});
What should I tell my client? What should I tell our users? Is there any way around this madness?
Everyone doing JS heavy pages must run into this. How do they deal with it?
Edit: He also has McAfee installed at the same time.
I've never heard of anti-virus interfering with in-browser JavaScript in that way. My best guess would be that they have their virus scanner running at a very aggressive security level.
The easiest options, in terms of amount of work required to address this issue would be:
Recommend your users lower their security settings
See if they can whitelist your site so the application will work correctly
Recommend a browser other than Internet Explorer, or suggest they install Chrome Frame
Of course, if these are not feasible options, you may have to go with a more simplistic approach to using JavaScript on your page. Instead of requiring JavaScript on the site, use it to enhance the site and make features easier to use.
To do this, you would have to make everything on your site work with JavaScript disabled. Have everything perform POSTs to the server for processing. JavaScript would sit on top of all of this to enhance the experience for users who have JavaScript working. In this scenario, things like anti-virus blocking click events on anchor links would end up with a submission to the server.
Of course, this is a lot more work on your part because it almost requires writing 2 versions of the site. This is an argument that is brought up all the time online, even when developing StackOverflow, as was discussed on their blog.
You're better off telling them to add an exception for your site.
They probably are using some sort of web shield I assume. Try asking them to add an exception to your site
Edit:Adding Link
http://www.symantec.com/norton/360
Under "Advanced Protection"
"Blocks browser, OS, and application threats; protects against infected Web sites"
So I assume there should be a way to add an exception