I've created a small activex control, it works fine in IE, surprisingly enough it doesn't seem to work in any other browser. I know that firefox has got an add-on to enable activex, my question is if there is any general API for all browsers to suggest the client to install. Other than that, what options do I have for enabling my activex component on multiple browsers?
ActiveX is a Windows-only, Internet Explorer only API. You can perhaps get an limited support in Firefox but most browsers won't support it. I'd really consider using something else like Flash, Javascript/HTML or even Silverlight which are supported across browsers and platforms.
ActiveX is still actively developed by Microsoft but has been commonly used for virus/malware delivery so users are (rightfully) very suspicious of applications written using it.
Related
I successfully (with much frustration) got our c# embedded signing to work on our site, however, that was before I tested with Safari on a Mac. Safari does not allow Third party sites to open in an iframe without already having a cookie for that site stored. If you either open the site beforehand or allowing all cookies, the document will show embedded. However, even messing around with that, the redirection after completion is not working. The please wait popup does not redirect back to my site. I am looking for any embedded solution that supports mac.
The process works great on windows, but does not work on Safari for Mac and is intermittent with Firefox and Chrome on mac.
I am looking for any non-iFrame embedded solutions that I could implement that should work on all platforms and browsers.
Since you have embedding working in terms of generating a URL token, it's up to you how to access that URL. We've seen developers write their own programs to view where they have complete control over the iFrame and can do whatever they like with it, and another solution we've seen is to use a web browser control.
see this SO link
The only workaround that I know of is to pop up a new browser window. I know there is work being done to make it work without cookies, but at this time the new browser window is your only choice.
Sorry about that.
I want to create a new application (which I will sell) that uses web browser control to automatically post things on the internet etc.
I did some research, and it looks like the primary choice for most people is .NET webbrowser control (via an instance of IE).
I don't want to do this because I want customers that own a Mac and Linux to be able to use my software.
With that said, are there any web browser control classes or toolkits available that can work on all OSes (e.g. something that uses Java?)
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE:
Web browser control is basically the ability for a program to act like a human and open a web browser and go to websites, fill out forms, check email (lol) etc.
Firefox, Chrome, Safari. I think virutally everything but IE works on all the OS's. Not suprising really when you think it's made by microsoft.
Selenium libraries let you create scripts (with a GUI or one of the supported languages [it has got most of the popular ones like Java, Python etc.]) for browser automation on all popular browsers (including chrome, which works on all OSes like mentioned by other answers).
What technologies are used to power Quake Live?
Specifically, how do you create a web application that makes such extensive use of 3D in the browser? The service requires you to download and install a plug-in in order to play. How do you create such a plug-in, and how does it interact with the web site?
Browser programs are very simply, programs. They are given an interface to interact with the browser, but beyond that, they can do anything a normal native application can do, like use DirectX or OpenGL.
Internet Explorer registers plugins using ActiveX. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and most other browsers use Netscape's NSPlugin API.
The MDC has plenty of documentation on writing plugins for Firefox.
There is also a question on SO about writing plugins for IE.
I just found out about the Yahoo UI Reset CSS tool/file and I'm using it on my website.
On my machine I have Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.01 and my webpage looks the same on these two browsers. A friend is using Internet Explorer 6 and the page is completely a mess.
I have two questions:
Am I that poor/stupid in writing CSS?
How can I test my webpage using different browsers on my machine?
Just because your website looks terrible in Internet Explorer 6 does not mean you are terrible at CSS. There are several documented bugs in Internet Explorer's rendering engine in regards to CSS. Web designers and developers have been struggling with these bugs for years. Several well known websites like Digg and YouTube are no longer going to support IE6.
You have several options to test your website in multiple browsers. The easiest way is to install all the browsers you want to test against on a local machine. There are 5 major browsers, and they all require different methods to install multiple versions.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
If you are using Windows XP, you can use Multiple IEs to install Internet Explorer versions 3, 4.01, 5, 5.5 and 6.
If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 (or Windows XP for that matter) you can download virtual machine images from Microsoft that contain a fully licensed Windows operating system with Internet Explorer. These virtual machine images expire every 90 to 120 days. They offer the following images:
Windows XP SP3 with IE6
Windows XP SP3 with IE7
Windows XP SP3 with IE8
Windows Vista with IE7
Windows Vista with IE8
These images can all be used with the free Virtual PC 2007.
Mozilla Firefox
You can install multiple versions of Firefox on the same operating system, but it is highly advised that you create a new profile for each version you are going to install. You can use the steps outlined on Rob Cherny's blog to set this up (the article is referring to Firefox 2, but it works for Firefox 3 and 3.5 too). Alternatively, you can use MultiFirefox.
Google Chrome
There really isn't an easy way to run multiple versions of Google Chrome on the same machine. Chrome installations are user account-specific, and standalone versions of Chrome have been made available (see question 3785991), so you can create a new Windows/Mac user account for each old version of Chrome you want to test.
However, the fact that updates are applied automatically and silently means that you really shouldn't worry to much about designing your website for older versions of Chrome. If this is unacceptable, you will need to use multiple user accounts, or virtual images as advised for Internet Explorer previously.
Apple Safari
Safari is similar to Google Chrome in that there isn't an easy way to run multiple versions on the same machine. Michel Fortin has an article that details how to get multiple versions running on Mac OS X. You can refer to this Stack Overflow question for the lowdown on Windows. Virtual images, again, seem to be the only way to go.
Opera
You can install older versions of Opera without issue, so long as they are installed to different directories.
If you are not particular about testing in your machine, you could try https://browsershots.org or https://blisk.io. These are free and provide screenshots of your site in various browsers on Linux/Windows/Mac OS/BSD.
A reset CSS--of which YUI's is only one example--aim to remove browser differences in default CSS properties for HTML elements, like some browsers will have a default 8 pixel padding on the html element (it was a surprise to me to find the html element was even styled when I first found out).
Your IE6 issues are entirely separate to that. Without examples of the site itself it's impossible to say why this might be but the obvious guess is that you're relying on reasonably advanced CSS features (eg a > b selectors, :hover on non-anchors, certain positioning schemes and so on).
For IE you can use this tool (Multiple IE) to test your website in old versions.
For the Reset CSS i redirect you to this question.
For testing various IE versions I use ietester
It allows different ie versions in each browser tab and it's free.
The purpose of it is that HTML(edit: the browsers have predefined properties for the elements.ty Zack) has some predefined properties for its elements like the built-in padding/margin for the paragraph element. The point of using the reset cheat sheet is to start with default values that are equal for all elements : size, margin, padding etc.
I use the reset file in my project but not in its original form. You should decide which elements in the sheet to use and you can always assign other default values for the tags there.
edit: You can test your web-page by installing most of the browsers available. Here is the latest statistics representing the usage of browsers.
My advice is to use Mozilla as your 1st choice testing browser and every now and then test the page on other browsers: IE6, IE7, IE8, Opera, Chrome and Safari (at least).
Here is a reference to a discussion about multiple IEs on one PC.
Best of luck!
I've been utlising a "web browser control" in desktop based applications (in my case Windows Forms .NET) for a number of years. I mostly use it to create a familiar flow-based user interface that also allows a seamless transition to the internet where required.
I'm really tired of the IE browser control because of the poor quality html it generates on output. Also, I guess that it is really just IE7 behind the scenes and so has many of that browser "issues". Despite this, it is quite a powerful control and provides rich interaction with your desktop app.
So, what other alternatives to the IE browser control are there? I looked at a Mosaic equivalent a year ago but was disappointed with the number of unimplemented features, maybe this has improved recently?
hmm..Interestingly
Mozilla seems to provide ActiveX control
K-Melon is another Gecko based browser control
Popular layout engines:
Mozilla Gecko
KHTML
WebKit (based on KHTML)
Though I'm not sure how easy it is to embed those in a .Net app.