I need to have a working web browser in a fullscreen Direct3D application. For example, Valve's Source-based games (sort of) do it in the MotD window when you join a server. Any tips on where to look?
Second Life uses ubrowser (http://ubrowser.com/) to embed a browser over a 3D world. As the source code is available for the Second Life client (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Get_source_and_compile) it would be a good place to see how they have done it.
Note however, they are using OpenGL, not Direct3D... but there is nothing specific in ubrowser itself to OpenGL.
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
FvwmButtons (a module of fvwm window manager) has the Swallow function, that embeds
the window of an application into a panel.
I have to do something like this with Motif and Xlib. I want to embed an Xclock into my application. I guess I have to change the Window ID of the embedded app.
How can I do that?
the only supported and reliable mechanism is XEmbed, but it requires the embedded app to cooperate. Without a cooperating app, you're in a world of scary hacks.
The basic thing you need to do is XReparentWindow() but the problem is that you're fighting the window manager which will also want to reparent the window. You're also potentially confusing the app, which will be expecting ICCCM and EWMH behavior, and expecting the parent window to be a WM frame.
Really old GNOME 1.x versions of gnome panel had a swallow feature you could try to steal hacks from maybe.
Without pretty extensive X knowledge this will be painful, and even
with it's not necessarily possible to make 100% reliable.
It looks like you are looking for the XEmbed protocol, documented here.
I'm pretty new to IOS4 audio/multitasking and i cant find an answer on this topic:
Got a, pretty easy, two part question:
What framework works in conjunction with the ipod framework? Everyone's seen the pandora app, so the question is:
How do you get the app to notify the user that music is playing (via the purple play icon in the status bar)?
How does this become controllable via the multitasking control bar (ya know, the ones right next to the lock-aspect button)?
It's all the same process.
The play icon is added when you successfully link up your app with the remote play controls (remoteControlReceivedWithEvent). The controls are just events that are channeled to your remote control aware app.
TYPE of audio doesn't matter, as far as i know (MPAudioPlayer doesn't work in the background though).
Hope that helps the newer coders out there :)
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)
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.