I'm developping a web server based on SpringFramework 4 and I hope to return some files and open them directly in the browser.
So far, I succeed to treat PDF by using Header Content-disposition: inline. But it is not working for word/excel. Google Chrome proposes to download the later or download/open by application.
So I hope to know
whether or not it's possible to open them directly in the browser
if yes, how to do that
As far as i know there is no built in Excel viewer for most browsers (IE is different because it is part of Windows, and so is Office). PDF is a different story ... there are loads of plug-ins available.
You might want to consider opening it in google docs, or office.com.
Apparently, there is a plugin available for firefox ... http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=27106
BUT that does mean any users will have to have it installed for them to get the behaviour you want!
Related
I'm looking for a way to open the WebKit “developer tools” from a script attached to a web-page. I need solutions for both Google Chrome and Safari, that will open the developer-tools pane if it's not already open, and (hopefully, if you can figure out how) also switch to a particular tab/section of said pane upon opening.
(Use-case, if anyone's interested: I want to open the console.log output-window if there's been an error and a developer is looking at the page; this particular page will be the output of some JavaScript unit-tests.)
I'm setting a bounty on this question because it's obviously one that hasn't been answered to anyone's satisfaction before, and the answer is a hairy one. Please don't answer it unless you have a real answer that both: 1) works in both browsers, and 2) doesn't require private extension APIs that won't work from a static web-page.
See (related, but specific to Chrome, and extensions): Can I programmatically open the devtools from a Google Chrome extension?
Simply: You can't.
The Dev Tools are not sandboxed (unlike any web page), thus granting sandboxed environments the power to open and control an unsandboxed environment is a major security design flaw.
I hope this answers your question :-)
You cannot directly use the Chrome's Dev Tools from your web pages. It is bundled with the browser.
But you can use it like a regular web application. Go to Chrome Developer Tools, then go to Contributing. You will find help on using Dev Tools for your app.
Setting up
Install Chrome Canary on Mac OS / Windows or download the latest Chromium build from the Chromium continuous builds archive on Linux
Clone Blink git repo from https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink.git
Set up a local web server that would serve files from WebKit/Source/WebCore/inspector on some port (8090)
Running
Run one copy of Chrome Canary with the following command line flags: --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir=blink/chromeServerProfile --remote-debugging-frontend="http://localhost:8090/front_end/inspector.html". These flags cause Chrome to allow websocket connections into localhost:9222 and to serve the front-end UI from your local git repo. (Adjust the path to chromeServerProfile to be some writable directory in your system).
Open a sample page (eg www.chromium.org).
Run a second copy of Chrome Canary with the command line flag: --user-data-dir=/work/chromeClientProfile. Open http://localhost:9222. Among the thumbnails you will see the sample page from the other browser instance. Click on it to start remote debugging your sample page.
The DevTools web page that opens is served from the remote-debugging-frontend in the first browser instance, which serves from the git repo your local filesystem. Debug this Devtools Web page and edit its source like any other web app.
I hope this is what you need.
There's no way to control the web developer tool from an in-page script, other than through the Console API which provides mostly logging facilities. Letting scripts control more than that would be a serious security issue, since it would allow a web page to control parts of the browser.
The only API remotely related to what you're trying to do is the debugger command, which switches to the script pane only if the developer tools were already open.
But who are you trying to develop this feature for?
If it's for developers working on the site, then it's better to just use the existing developer tools manually, by setting breakpoints, or the pause on exceptions toggle.
If it's for end users, don't. Unless your site is supposed to be used by highly technical web developers, you're only going to scare away users if the developer tools suddenly pop up with errors.
If you really want to show errors you can implement your own logging framework and the UI for error reporting, which works with basic JS and doesn't depend on a specific browser environment.
here's another answer that proposes a solution to your mentioned use case/objective (detecting errors, getting & displaying console logs) and not the not possible objective in the title.
you can make and use a console wrapper and use it in your code
and/or you can monkey patch the console functions if you use/import external js, but you need to apply it before loading them.
No, Any secure Browser will not allow a script to open an extension, as it leads to insecurity.
But, You may design an Add-On/extension OR Console API's to do the same.. for specific site.
Create an Add-On like this to achieve that requirement.
You can try sending keys 'CTRL' + SHIFT' + 'I'
that may work for Chrome any FireFox (in I.E you need to use 'F12'
I am using it when required as few utils in this add-on use to work better then the built-in.
EDIT:
Now a days Chrome is advanced with many new advancements source.
I hope this helps!
Hate to answer such an old question, but was surprised to not see this as an answer, so I thought I'd add it in case it can help someone in the future.
Assuming you have access to the source code, you can place an alert("open devtools"); statement immediately before the first line you're interested in debugging. This alert will give you an opportunity to open DevTools and set a breakpoint on that first line before clearing the alert thus allowing the code to continue and hitting the breakpoint.
We have a web application which has some features that works only in Chrome and I want to launch this web app using Google chrome browser with url of the web app as parameter from Internet explorer via a hyperlink. I tried
file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Google/Chrome/application/chrome.exe
but it downloads the file + how do I add parameter to the exe.
By default, a browser cannot launch another program (plugins and extensions being possible exceptions). If they could, imagine the havoc some malicious user could get up to.
I don't think there's going to be a great answer for this, but you could make a .bat file that opens chrome to a particular URL (assuming you're using Windows), download that and click on it after it downloads.
Here is a useful answer in that case.
You could also (theoretically) make an extension or lower the security settings on IE to allow ActiveX controls. Here's a partial solution. I tried to make something similar a while back and didn't have much luck, but if you're determined...
Maybe there's a better way that doesn't involve such complicated solutions?
I found myself needing to achieve this myself. It appears a later release of Chrome had broken the fix described in Adam Fowlers blog.
I got in touch with him and he's now updated his post, providing the now necessary registry changes required to make this work.
I've tried this myself and it works nicely.
Adam Fowlers blog post - How to launch a URL in Google Chrome
https://www.adamfowlerit.com/2015/05/how-to-launch-a-url-in-google-chrome/
Big thanks to Adam for his time! Hope this helps.
This is a .reg file that creates (on a 64-bit Windows) a special URL protocol that allows you to open chrome: links in Chrome:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\chrome]
#="Chrome URL Prorocol"
"URL Protocol"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\chrome\Application]
"ApplicationIcon"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe,0"
"ApplicationName"="Google Chrome"
"ApplicationDescription"="Access the Internet"
"ApplicationCompany"="Google LLC"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\chrome\DefaultIcon]
#="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe,0"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\chrome\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\chrome\shell\open]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\chrome\shell\open\command]
#="cmd /v:on /c \"set url=%1 & set url=!url:chrome:=! & \"\"\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe\"\"\" -- !url!\""
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ProtocolExecute\chrome]
"WarnOnOpen"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ProtocolExecute\chrome]
"WarnOnOpen"=dword:00000000
Links should be like chrome:https://google.com or chrome:google.com. "chrome:" part is removed before launching Chrome.
You can use a URI Scheme, Google installs one by default as shared by Adam Fowler here:
http://www.adamfowlerit.com/2015/05/28/how-to-launch-a-url-in-google-chrome/
So you can create a link like this (note the space before the URL):
ChromeHTML:// www.bbc.co.uk
But it is broken! There's a bug report with Google, see Adam's article. It would be good to add some weight/comments to this bug if you want it fixed.
However your next decision depends on whether you have some control over the deployment of your web application because these bugs can be fixed using registry fixes.
Interestingly, if you can deploy registry fixes, in theory you could create your own URI schemes.
If you can modify the IE permissions on the PCs needed, you can use a javascript link to launch a process. Mine launches a custom program that launches chrome with command line switches and a URL, or opens a web page that indicates they need to contact IT to install Chrome on their PC:
javascript:(new ActiveXObject('Shell.Application')).ShellExecute('\\\\server\\path\\LaunchInChrome.exe', '-incognito --use-system-default-printer https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?realm=xxx http://webserver/MissingChrome.html');
But you could modify it to launch chrome.exe directly instead. You will need to enable Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe for scripting in the Intranet Zone (I wouldn't recommend this for any other zone).
you have to pass the parameter to chrome, something like this.
start chrome https://www.google.com/
I have seen several of these question from 1-2 years ago about Android pre-4.0. I want to ask this again for Android 4+.
I have a galaxy s3 running 4.3 and when I click on a pdf link it downloads the document rather than opening it in the browser.
I am building a website and it will have links to pdf documents. The desired behavior when one of my users clicks on the pdf link on their Android device is for the pdf document to just open like it would on a desktop browser.
Is there anything I can do to achieve this functionality, or does Android still not support this?
I cannot control the device that a user is using, so I'm looking for a solution that would achieve this functionality in as many cases as possible.
The stock browser does not support native viewing of PDFs. You can however redirect the link to google docs and view internally that way. To do this, launch your implicit view intent, as I suspect you are already doing, but prepend the URI with "https://docs.google.com/gview?url=" and Google will take care of the rest
Alternately, there are a few libraries that you will see linked around SO, but from what I saw while researching, most are proprietary and cost and even then they might not work 100%. Google docs is free and works as often as Google does, which given that this is their platform you have to imagine they make certain their service works close to 100% of the time.
it downloads the document rather than opening it in the browser.
"it" is a Web browser. There are many Web browsers for Android. A Web browser can do whatever it wants when the user clicks on a link to a PDF file.
The desired behavior when one of my users clicks on the pdf link on their Android device is for the pdf document to just open like it would on a desktop browser.
That is not the behavior of all desktop browsers, particularly depending upon user configuration (e.g., browser extensions). A desktop Web browser, like a mobile Web browser, is welcome to do whatever it wants when the user clicks on a link to a PDF file.
does Android still not support this?
Android is an OS. Android neither supports nor does not support this. Web browser applications will or will not support what you want.
I cannot control the device that a user is using, so I'm looking for a solution that would achieve this functionality in as many cases as possible.
You are welcome to test a variety of Android Web browsers, see if there are any that behave the way you like, and suggest to your users that you would prefer that they use those browsers. Your users, in turn, are welcome to honor or ignore your request.
Or, as Chris M points out, you are welcome to not show a PDF at all, but rather redirect the user to some URL that processes the PDF and renders it in some other way.
I'm looking for a way to open the WebKit “developer tools” from a script attached to a web-page. I need solutions for both Google Chrome and Safari, that will open the developer-tools pane if it's not already open, and (hopefully, if you can figure out how) also switch to a particular tab/section of said pane upon opening.
(Use-case, if anyone's interested: I want to open the console.log output-window if there's been an error and a developer is looking at the page; this particular page will be the output of some JavaScript unit-tests.)
I'm setting a bounty on this question because it's obviously one that hasn't been answered to anyone's satisfaction before, and the answer is a hairy one. Please don't answer it unless you have a real answer that both: 1) works in both browsers, and 2) doesn't require private extension APIs that won't work from a static web-page.
See (related, but specific to Chrome, and extensions): Can I programmatically open the devtools from a Google Chrome extension?
Simply: You can't.
The Dev Tools are not sandboxed (unlike any web page), thus granting sandboxed environments the power to open and control an unsandboxed environment is a major security design flaw.
I hope this answers your question :-)
You cannot directly use the Chrome's Dev Tools from your web pages. It is bundled with the browser.
But you can use it like a regular web application. Go to Chrome Developer Tools, then go to Contributing. You will find help on using Dev Tools for your app.
Setting up
Install Chrome Canary on Mac OS / Windows or download the latest Chromium build from the Chromium continuous builds archive on Linux
Clone Blink git repo from https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink.git
Set up a local web server that would serve files from WebKit/Source/WebCore/inspector on some port (8090)
Running
Run one copy of Chrome Canary with the following command line flags: --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir=blink/chromeServerProfile --remote-debugging-frontend="http://localhost:8090/front_end/inspector.html". These flags cause Chrome to allow websocket connections into localhost:9222 and to serve the front-end UI from your local git repo. (Adjust the path to chromeServerProfile to be some writable directory in your system).
Open a sample page (eg www.chromium.org).
Run a second copy of Chrome Canary with the command line flag: --user-data-dir=/work/chromeClientProfile. Open http://localhost:9222. Among the thumbnails you will see the sample page from the other browser instance. Click on it to start remote debugging your sample page.
The DevTools web page that opens is served from the remote-debugging-frontend in the first browser instance, which serves from the git repo your local filesystem. Debug this Devtools Web page and edit its source like any other web app.
I hope this is what you need.
There's no way to control the web developer tool from an in-page script, other than through the Console API which provides mostly logging facilities. Letting scripts control more than that would be a serious security issue, since it would allow a web page to control parts of the browser.
The only API remotely related to what you're trying to do is the debugger command, which switches to the script pane only if the developer tools were already open.
But who are you trying to develop this feature for?
If it's for developers working on the site, then it's better to just use the existing developer tools manually, by setting breakpoints, or the pause on exceptions toggle.
If it's for end users, don't. Unless your site is supposed to be used by highly technical web developers, you're only going to scare away users if the developer tools suddenly pop up with errors.
If you really want to show errors you can implement your own logging framework and the UI for error reporting, which works with basic JS and doesn't depend on a specific browser environment.
here's another answer that proposes a solution to your mentioned use case/objective (detecting errors, getting & displaying console logs) and not the not possible objective in the title.
you can make and use a console wrapper and use it in your code
and/or you can monkey patch the console functions if you use/import external js, but you need to apply it before loading them.
No, Any secure Browser will not allow a script to open an extension, as it leads to insecurity.
But, You may design an Add-On/extension OR Console API's to do the same.. for specific site.
Create an Add-On like this to achieve that requirement.
You can try sending keys 'CTRL' + SHIFT' + 'I'
that may work for Chrome any FireFox (in I.E you need to use 'F12'
I am using it when required as few utils in this add-on use to work better then the built-in.
EDIT:
Now a days Chrome is advanced with many new advancements source.
I hope this helps!
Hate to answer such an old question, but was surprised to not see this as an answer, so I thought I'd add it in case it can help someone in the future.
Assuming you have access to the source code, you can place an alert("open devtools"); statement immediately before the first line you're interested in debugging. This alert will give you an opportunity to open DevTools and set a breakpoint on that first line before clearing the alert thus allowing the code to continue and hitting the breakpoint.
my application is setting browserhome page ,search provider ,favourites etc to all supported browsers like googlechrome,firefox,internet explorer.My purpose is to automate my application using selenium .In case of IE these informationa are stored in registry . so it is easy for me to validate the above details .But for firefox and google chrome its bit problem .So i just want know whether there is any functions available in javascript to check browser homepage ,search provider,favourites etc in firefox and google chrome ?
The simple answer is no. It would be a security and privacy issue if client side js code could access that information. Instead you would need to use a browser extension, or in your case you can just use an external program with administrative rights. I am pretty sure that selenium does not have this functionality built in, however it is all available if you know where the browser stores it. IE uses the registry, but chrome and Firefox use proprietary files in their profile directories. There may be an library that does this, otherwise it is possible