Ok, this may sound as a very strange question, but nevertheless.
What I want is to have a separate browser application (on mac) with some fixed set of tabs that will be reseted on each start of this app. For example, I use a bunch of web applications for work (gitlab, toggle, forge, etc) and I want to use them separately from other sites, in separate application.
Can this be achieved with any browser, or maybe quickly built with some SDK or in any other way?
For now the most close thing I've found is this: http://www.sitepoint.com/tabbed-browser-node-webkit-angularjs/
But the approach.. You use a single webview, fake tabs in js and use iframe to display content. It should work, but I wonder, if there is a better way?
You can create different profiles on chrome and set them up to start up with the list of tabs you need for each profile.
each profile is virtually a sandbox with it's own storage cookies sessions etc, so you can have different user logins for each profile.
It'll look something like this:
Create a desktop shortcut that will point to chrome, stating the profile and the list of websites you want to open by default (separated with spaces):
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory="Default" https://google.com https://gmail.com
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1" https://github.com https://twitter.com
You can find your chrome profile directories in:
%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data
Related
From the command line, or from an application, I want to open a NEW browser instance with a specified size and position, and pointed to a specific URL. I want to open a browser that acts like a dialog box. Ideally, I'd like to be able to disable "decorations" (like tabs, bookmarks, etc.). I do not want to open a new tab or pop-up window from an existing browser instance.
I know Electron or Node Webkit do this, but I just want to open a browser as that acts as a GUI front end for whatever back end I'm building.
I'd be happy if it would work for a specific browser; say, Chrome, or Chromium.
So, for instance, a Python app (or C/C++, Java, etc.) could start it's web server, then open a browser of the proper size, pointed to "localhost:xxxx/whatever.html", and serve up data via AJAX.
Kind of a universal single page app front end...
UPDATE (SOLUTION?)
The answer seems to be in two parts: 1) Opening the browser with command line switches, and 2) Resizing the window in JavaScript.
Using chromium (or Chrome), on the command line:
chromium-browser --new-window --app=http://192.168.1.80:8080/index.html
Then, within your JavaScript:
window.resizeTo(800,500)
This will bring up a new window and resize it.
This is great. Now, I can make an app in any language that allows me to open a web server. The user interface is done in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The browser is opened from within the application using the proper command line switches.
Electron does simply open up one or multiple browser windows, you can set them to any url via BrowserWindow.loadURL(url) this could be https://google.com https://localhost:1337 (Your backend webserver) or a local HTML file. The BrowserWindow can be created with information such as size and position.
The only alternative would be something like Qt HTML5 applications that use Qt WebEngine, but this does basically the same thing since Electron and Qt WebEngine use chromium.
Also, there is no point in a single page app that runs without JavaScript.
I use two different Chrome profiles (users) on my laptop: one for my work stuff and one for my personal browsing.
Sometimes I click a link from HipChat and it opens it in the personal profile even though it's for work (e.g. login.work.com). (This is because I happen to have been in my personal chrome window most recently.)
I'd like to make a chrome extension I can install in my personal profile to match the URLs of *.work.com and send these over to the work profile window.
I haven't found a way to open a url into a different profile. Anyone know of a way?
(A hacky idea I got from reading https://superuser.com/a/289618 is maybe I could shell out to something along the lines of google-chrome --user-data-dir=$work_profile, but I'd be happier if there was a JS API and I didn't have to ask permission to run programs on the user's computer.)
Dropping an answer in case it's still useful to anyone.
I built my chrome extension CopyTabs (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copytabs/obkbjogekcjalnaebheboejhfkamadkg) to do something similar. It is able to open links, current tabs, selected tabs or windows, in the current chrome user profile, another chrome user profile or another browser entirely.
I made use of chrome.exe --profile-directory="profileName" to open URLs in a selected profile, but this has a handler that runs on the user's machine, with profileName being the internal name of the chrome profile, for example --profile-directory="Profile1" instead of --profile-directory="My Name As Profile".
So to answer your question, no I don't think there's anyway around a local handler on the user's machine to achieve this functionality.
Though the question is an old one but maybe someone is looking for an answer.
In the new versions of chrome when you right click on a link, in the pop-up menu, there is an option to open the link in another profile. For this to work, ofcourse, there need to be multiple user profiles in Chrome.
Works like a charm!
Hope it helps.
There is no solution for this. It would need a handler, a separate program, that captures the URL before it reaches Chrome, parses your preferences for which URLs go to which profile and then starts the specified Chrome installation with specified profile flags.
However, afaik, such a program does not exist (at least on Windows).
Further, Chrome cannot even select which profile out of many is selected, when Chrome is started from the OS "call URL to be opened" function and NOT started by user-activated clicking on a Chrome application shortcut (with specific profile selection instructions).
Naturally, the latter works 100% wonderfully on Firefox, which has built-in profile selector after the browser has been started, and regardless of which method was used to start Firefox (user click on Firefox icon or OS pipe of "open URL" to Firefox).
So; no solution in Chrome.
I believe that Account Surfer should be able to do the things that you're looking for. Here's an overview from Windows store:
Quickly switch between accounts and browsers with Account Surfer.
Decide what account or browser to use when opening the link.
Read more:
https://dospolov.com/posts/handle-chrome-profiles-with-account-surfer
https://trello.com/b/QOLCmlg3/account-surfer-roadmap
Yes u can:
install extension like this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-in-ms-edge/mjoebkkejejidnkfdekpbooceogbapnf
copy address of profile (for example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 2)
Insert it in settings of extension
profit
OR
Use Browser Chooser 2
The app finicky did the trick for me. You can check out this link for installation and configuration for the same.
Finicky example configuration
I'm diving into the world of Chrome Extension development, primarily because there is a very small feature that is missing in Chrome that I miss dearly. The context-menu option to "Set as background/wallpaper" like that found in Firefox. Sounds trivial, but it's convenient.
I have most of the "basic" stuff worked out with the manifest file, am able to install it, even managed to get it to show up as a context menu item.
The problem obviously is that I am wanting to mess with a user's OS-level settings which is extremely difficult because of security issues (fully understand this).
I found an extension that allowed this in older versions of Chrome, and it looked like the developer used some type of .dll and C++ to accomplish this.
I'm not really sure how to make this work.
Since that Chrome doesn't allow these kind of manipulations (such as your PC's settings), you will need to create a native application that will run beside your extension. When the user chooses the image from your extension and selects "use as wallpaper", you will use the native messaging API to send a message to your desktop application, that will set the wallpaper (and do whatever else you can't do within a chrome extension) for you.
You can use the chrome.wallpaper app api to set the wallpaper after using the messaging api to send the image from your extension.
We have a custom web app in our intranet that allow users to browse and search our shared file system in a way more appropriate for our organization. as compared to windows explorer/mac finder. However, when the users click on, for example, a link pointing to a word document the document is downloaded by the browser and then opened. I am trying to provide a better way, namely that the file is opened directly from the shared folder that each user has mapped in his own computer. This will make things faster and will not pollute the browser download folder.
I was planning to create a chrome or firefox extension that recognizes certain css class attached to a link, remaps the link to the shared file system and and launch an external process. Any idea how to achieve this? Is there a better solution?
If you want the URL to be handled by a custom program you could create special URLs using a custom Protocol (ex: MyApp:// instead of http://) and then register that protocol to be opened via a custom program. The links would only work on computers that have your program installed and where the protocol has been registered to be handled by your application.
I am thinking about having the following use-case:
User installs application on local machine.
User goes to our website, and are presented with many links (choices).
User clicks on a link.
Application starts, with some information contained within the link passed to the application.
Step 4 is obviously a security minefield. The end goal is that the user makes a choice, and if the application is installed, it starts with some information passed to it (ie command line parameters, or perhaps a temp file somewhere on the user's machine)
Can I/ Should I access the registry from javascript? Are there any ideas about how I might go about this? Do you have an alternative suggestion?
Assuming the applications the user installs are also developed by you.
Register a file extension for use by the specific application - then your web links can be links to a file that is downloaded and auto-run by your app. The file could contain details on the defaults for your app to use.
Sort of like how clicking on a .pdf file opens your pdf reader.
As an alternative to the file-extension solution you may want to know about Custom Application Protocol feature. Link is for Windows but there are nearly same techniques on other systems. I can't say if this approach works in every browser but you may want to try it out.
Accessing the registry from JavaScript inside a browser is nigh on impossible for the security implications. To access the registry from the web, I'd imagine you'd have to use a binary (C++ or others) program that can read the registry, but also has an HTTP module to communicate with your server.
Sounds like you might need the Click Once deployement feature for your app. I think once it's installed over http there should be a pretty easy way to launch an executable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClickOnce