Google earth plugin alternatives for Linux - linux

I want to show a Google Earth like globe on my website, where people can rotate it and zoom it like normal Google Earth. I want to show signed up users on my website on this glob but the problem I am facing is that Google Earth plug in is not available for Linux , what other options do I have? thanks in advance for all your help.

I'm not sure what you mean by "other options". As you correctly state the plug-in doesn't work on Linux so there isn't any other option as far as that goes.
At Google I/O back in May 2008 it was announced that the plug-in would be available for both Mac and Linux by August that year - however only the Mac version ever surfaced.
The last I heard on this was in 2011 on the feature request page for the plug-in.
"...please note that we do believe that we can support Linux in the
future, and furthermore, we intend to support it. However currently we
do not have any timeline to announce for such a release."
See: https://code.google.com/p/earth-api-samples/issues/detail?id=117
If you 'star' the request you should be notified of any updates, but as you can see it doesn't look to be something that is going to happen in any kind of hurry...
EDIT:
As for other, non-Google, alternatives you should take a look at WebGL Earth - it is still BETA but works on linux and is open source

Related

Accessing applications using python

So I want to write a code that can change my keyboard's backlit color according to the time of the day
I have an asus rog strix laptop and want python to use ROG aura core(application which can configure the keyboard's backlit color) to change my keyboard's color. The problem I have run into is that I don't know where the application is located and how to allow my code to make changes in it
I don't think that it is possible for you to change the backlight settings of your keyboard using code... ASUS ROG Aura Core application is a propriety solution and hence, you can't access its code base to make desired changes...
The only way that this might be possible is if the devs at ASUS have released an API that allows you to modify the settings...
After searching the Internet, I did find that ASUS has recently released an Aura SDK that might do the trick... But, after reading the documentation and looking at some repositories at GitHub, I believe that this SDK is built for PC custom builders... And, I believe that you will need to use either C++/C# to code in it...
So, Python is of no use here...
Click the link to visit the Asus Aura SDK Official Site
Tip: You have used the wrong tag in this question... The ideal tag to be used here should have been 'Asus', 'aura-core'...

Why should I be concerned with supporting really outdated browsers?

It seems every resource regarding things like CSS3 and HTML5 nag me about particular things not being implemented in older browsers, and hacky workarounds. Really who uses IE 9 or 10 anymore anyway? IE11 is out, Edge is default on W10, and I assume most / all people use it. To me it seems to make the most sense to simply make the page render properly on the latest Chrome (what I use), Firefox, Edge, and Safari..
Ughhh apple. My understanding is that the Windows version of Safari is very outdated and trying to get a (questionably obtained) image of macOS working in a VM has been unsuccessful. I'm not spending a dime for any Apple products just to test my site on their browser. So what can I do in order to test how my site will work in it?
Regarding your question...
Who uses IE 9 or 10 anymore anyway?
Typically, people with older Windows systems. This is important for your website based on whether or not IE 9/10 users will be accessing the website that is being supported. (A review of your website's web logs can shed light on this.) If your website is an internal intranet site, then an organization's IT department may dictate the browsers that users can use. However, large eCommerce websites will often support older browsers out of fear of losing customers to rivals.
Regarding your second question...
How do I go about ensuring the site is functional and looks reasonably
good on apple products conveniently, without any apple products while
on a minimal budget?
Without actual Apple products, something that emulates these displays is needed. One option is the "Inspect" option with the Chrome browser. (Display your website on Chrome, right-click, select "Inspect".) Inspect allows you to choose between a Desktop or Mobile display. With a Mobile display, you also have the option of selecting several Apple displays (e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.). This is probably the next best thing to having the actual Apple device and its display for website testing.

What would be a minimum system/browsers version to run a simple website?

I got this job which I have to create a promotional website for a prefecture and they are asking me to list the minimum system requirements a user must fulfill to access this website. I am not sure on how to make this list. The website will have two versions: one very simple for older browsers and computers, and another one responsive. The idea is to maintain everything very simple, without any animation or something that would be difficult to run on older browsers.
What do you guys think would be a safe way to describe the minimum system/browsers version for using a website like this?
Thank you very much!
Most web development companies set a minimum level of browser support, not so much system specifications. My development company specifies the most recent two versions of Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari and Chrome. If they need to support older browsers, I would set the minimum to IE8 and maybe 10 previous versions of FireFox, Chrome and Safari.
Also, you should use something like the HTML5 boilerplate and feature detection in the site. That way you can build one website that satisfies all of the requirements. Building two separate sites becomes a nightmare when it comes to future updates.

How to make Mobile version of website

I am looking for something that will help me learn how to set up my site so that when people go to it there is the regular version and the mobile version. Problem I am having is that most of the sites I see on google are pay sites that help you set that up. Can I just make two versions of my site and load them both on my hosting? Also how does it know when to load the mobile versus the regular? These are the types of things I am looking to learn, any suggestions of places to start?
Please please please make sure you do the following:
Only do a mobile version if it adds value.
If a user requests a deep link from a mobile device, don't redirect to the mobile home page
Allow the user to choose to view the full version
Make sure tablets such as the iPad uses the full version by default
Don't serve WML to the hi-res smartphones such as the iPhone
If your full sized website is unusable on a phone, consider tweaking it to be more suitable (don't print content text too wide).
Modern iPhones and iPads are perfectly capable of handling most full sized websites, there is little need for a mobile version unless it actually improves the user experience. I hate to get redirected to a baby interface that doesn't provide the information I need.
Good examples of mobile versions include:
Google website
Gmail website
Mediocre examples include:
Any blogpress site
Bad examples include
anything that uses WML
Here's Apple's advice on providing mobile versions to the iPad:
Note that the Safari on iPad user
agent string contains the word
"Mobile", but does not contain the
word "iPhone". If you are currently
serving mobile content to any browser
that self-identifies as "Mobile", you
should modify your user agent string
checks to look for iPad and avoid
sending it the wrong version of your
site. The version numbers in this
string are subject to change over time
as new versions of Safari on iPad
become available, so any code that
checks the user agent string should
not rely on version numbers.
Something to look into would be the #mobile css media type, which is used to load a different styles when loading in a mobile device. I am not sure which devices support it, but I imagine it would be most of the popular models. As far as your suggestion, you can certainly host two separate sites, but I would defiantly go through Alex's suggestions before you go through the trouble.
http://www.w3.org/TR/css-mobile/
Alex had some good suggestions, but if you really want to serve up a specific version based on mobile or non-mobile you can take a look at the http header. In some cases the User Agent will give it away, but not always. Check out this link for details: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/

Why does google.com look different on blackberry & phonegap vs. blackberry & browser

I'm tyring to get phonegap up and running on blackberry storm (9530 simulator). I had been testing my webapp from withing BB's built in browser, and it was looking ok, but then it totally bit once I tried to look at the some code from within phonegap, even though I was pointing phonegap to the same url (I hadn't yet gotten to the point of running code locally on the device).
I tried a test case on google and got similiar results. see below. I suspect that I'm missing something basic here. I would have expect both images to be nearly identical.
Browser
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/outside/ImgDeviceBB9530WebGoogle.jpg
Phonegap
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/outside/ImgDeviceBB9530PgGoogle.jpg
[Update]
To shed some light on what is happening, I ran the browser and the embedded browser (phonegap) against the W3 mobile web acid test: http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobile-test/
I definitely notice differences between the two, but I don't yet know the 'why' and the 'how-to-address'.
Acid via built-in browser
(source: eleganttechnologies.com)
BTW - I ran this earlier today and got a couple more green square than just now.
Acid via browser embedded into phonegap
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/outside/ImgDeviceBb9530PgAcid.jpg
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about phonegap, but have a pretty good theory. By default the embedded browser control on BlackBerry uses an older version of the rendering engine than the BlackBerry browser itself does.
At the BlackBerry developer conference last year, a talk was given about this, and there's an undocumented option to use the newer rendering engine. \
The option ID is 17000 (yes, a magic number, which could change, use at your own risk etc), and should be set to true. Not sure how you'd pass this option through phonegap (I'm not familiar with the toolkit) but using the BlackBerry APIs it's something like:
BrowserContent content;
...
content.getRenderingOptions().setProperty(RenderingOptions.CORE_OPTIONS_GUID, 17000, true);
I don't know the specifics of the browsers you are using, but I do know that most of the big sites will detect your OS + browser combination to decide what HTML to show you.
If Google is seeing a different user agent, you might get a generic mobile version of the HTML instead os the Blackberry specific HTML you get for the built in browser.
If you have access to a web server, try hitting it with both browser setups and see if there is any difference in the log file. That might tell you something interesting.
As we can see in your Acid tests...
One browser (the built-in one) is reporting correctly as a BlackBerry9530, and the other (phonegap) is not presenting the user-agent ["Testing with ."].
In this case, Google is providing you with the default view of their homepage, whereas when you are reporting yourself as a BlackBerry device, you will get the BlackBerry specific rendering.
By the sounds of things, using phonegap is removing the default user-agent (most probably because it's not recognising your device). As phonegap is open-source, the best bet is to get in there, and debug it and find out what happens with the user-agent when the http requests leave the device and track it back from there.
Maybe one browser has capabilities that another one does not?
Hm. By looking at the screenshot I would say that the second page is probably missing some resources. It may be missing some images, scripts and the CSS files, which would explain different l&f. Knowing how Blackberry Browser Field API works, I would guess that the implementation that uses the BrowserField was not done correctly. Just my guess. In addition to that, when the browser field is initialized the caller needs to configure it properly by enabling the appropriate browser features - scripts, styles etc. Again, the API is done in a very weird way, I have gotten myself into this trap once. When setting the options, you cannot just create one mask (like CSS | WML | SCRIPT) and make one call. Options are numeric and, I believe, non-overlapping - but you still need to call the API for setting each option independently.
Also the way asynchronous loading of the resources for BrowserField takes time to understand.
Just my $0.02.

Resources