How can i create a browser component in J2ME which can display web pages inside an application? Is there any API available for this ? or is this really possible ?
My experiences:
J2MEPolish has HTML browser. It costs 990EUR per app and you need to use J2MEPolish to use it. But be warned: their HTML browser has many issues, it supports forms and other advanced elements, but if you try to get something you like then rendering quality is bad (e.g. no spacing, defaults to center view etc). Free evaluation/GPL is available.
PocketLearn J2ME HTML Component - http://www.j2mehtml.com/ seems to have less features but much better rendering quality. This is not free as well, and there they do not provide any useful evaluation download or public license fee info.
J2ME cHTML browser is free and open source, but no docs (and probably no quality too)
As far as I know, the only browser written in J2ME is Opera Mini (not to get confused with Opera Mobile, which is a different thing). It runs amazingly good even on very low end phones, but most of the HTML handling is done on a special server that Opera hosts, and the client gets optimizes, preformatted, binary data to display.
Doing everything on the phone using Java might be hard or even impossible. You'd be able to code up a browser that displays very basic HTML pages, but doing it right even for more complex pages seems to be impossible on J2ME because of the limited memory and CPU.
I could imagine that some high end phones come with a custom API to embed a native browser into you Midled, but the standart J2ME definitely does not have this.
The only portable way to display a web page in the browser is with:
MIDlet.platformRequest(String URL);
On some mobile, this will terminate the J2ME application though.
The Content handling API is what you're looking for.
That's JSR 211.
Unfortunately, to do what you want, you would need to find a handset that contains an implementation of JSR211 that is both complete and correct.
That doesn't exist yet as far as I know.
The only J2ME emulator that I know that may allow you to launch a web browser window (outside of a MIDlet) is the Nokia Series60 emulator. That doesn't have a complete implementation of JSR 211.
Try this
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fire-j2me/
Unfortunatley there are no built-in components in Java ME to render html.
You can try htmlBrowser component of the j2mePolish toolkit (www.j2mepolish.org)
Related
Description of the Problem
As NPAPI plugins will be deprecated in Chrome (maybe in Firefox too soon) and being part of a project (WebChimera) that is based on an NPAPI plugin. I've been thinking of different solutions to keep NPAPI support in browsers. (as porting this plugin to NaCL is currently impossible, but the plugin can be used in a frozen version of node-webkit that currently supports NPAPIs)
So I was wondering if it is possible for a browser page to open a node-webkit app on the user's PC, then using JS with/without jQuery to send data about the html element where the Node-Webkit window (with always on top set) should be to the app (maybe through a websocket) to always position it there.
I know I can get a html element's size, position in JavaScript, I also know I can track the scroll of the user and browser tab changes to do the necessary changes to the window size, position and visibility.
The Question
The thing that truly stops me from even attempting this is how would I know when a browser is not fullscreen, and how would I know the browser's position on the screen if it is not fullscreen either from the on page JS or from node-webkit directly. Another thing that should be a concern is what screen is the browser window on.
Am I the only one that has thought of such an endeavor with node-webkit, are there any open source projects attempting this?
Any thoughts or comments on this would be greatly appreciated as a solution to this would not only save NPAPI plugins in the near future but will also open a world where Node-Webkit can also be used as a viable solution to build browser plugins too. :)
This would involve a lot of painful hackery. You'd have to solve most of these issues on all platforms independently and rely on a lot of implementation details.
As a possible alternative, check out the plans for FireBreath 2.0 which will support plugins which can be loaded via NPAPI, ActiveX, and Native Messaging via a new protocol called FireWyrm. Currently there is no drawing support when using the FireWyrm interface and only Native Messaging is supported. Additionally it's not quite finished, though I'm getting close =]
Now it's possible to use libvlc to play video directly on NW.js/Electron page: https://www.npmjs.com/package/webchimera.js
What this project is: it's low level (written in C++) addon which use libvlc and allow decode video frames to JS ArrayBuffer object. In turn this ArrayBuffer object could be drawn on HTML5 canvas directly or with WebGL. This project use Node.js/V8 API directly and not use NPAPI at all, so will live even after NPAPI deprecation. Another good thing - perfomance of this (espesially if use WebGL) is comparable with original VLC player perfomance.
Simple usage example available at: https://github.com/jaruba/wcjs-player
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).
I know that Apple products like the iPad or the iPhone have trouble with flash apps.
What web development tools should I use in order to avoid compatibility issues when creating a website? My only constraint is that the languages must provide for interactivity and animation - such as in jQuery.
HTML, CSS, and PHP are a few that I can think of that will behave on 99% of all internet enabled devices.
What tools & languages are available to use when creating a website intended to be viewed on any device's internet "explorer"?
Should I just stick to HTML, CSS, & PHP? I want a certain level of interactivity so that, for example, a user can hover over images and have pop-ups containing data to appear... or when an object is clicked, an action can happen without a page reload.
Can someone point me in the right direction and help me develop a list of languages that are all-device friendly?
I am familiar with programming in several web-focused languages, I'm just wondering which ones to stay away from. Certain ones will limit the devices that can view the site and besides that constraint, the site needs to be interactive and animated.
HTML, CSS, PHP, JQUERY are truly your best bet for developing for a wide range of devices. If the scope of devices is the main goal I would stay away from using HTML5 and CSS3. You still may run into problems using much jquery with IE7 below. Mobile browsers on the other hand are much more advanced or up to date with standards then desktop browsers. I would suggest creating two versions of your application. One dedicated to running on mobile devices and one for desktop browsers. It is a shame apple wouldn't support flash applications. If all you need is hoovers for interaction you won't even need jquery / but for the other it will be useful.
The "Web" is a name for the concept of having interlinked documents accessible over the internet. Therefore, to have a website you really only need a document able to link to other documents, namely HTML.
HTML is not really a programming language or a tool though, it is a document format.
If you want to make a website you need use HTML to Markup what you're writing. Then you use CSS to format different sections of the document you marked up.
PHP though, is completely separate from this, PHP is for creating dynamic HTML, or any document on the server side.
If you want to achieve a flash-effect on a site you use Javascript to modify the page content (HTML) and appearance (CSS).
If you need to learn HTML/CSS I would highly recommend http://htmldog.com/
As per the question, HTML CSS and Javascript are pretty much the only mobile-browser compatible method for website content as they don't need plugins.
What exactly are you trying to do?
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.
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.