Desktop HTML + CSS + JS application? How this is possible? - javascript

I've recently fell in love with Nitro (http://nitrotasks.com), but what got me very curious was that it was written in HTML, CSS and Javascript, yet, it is packaged as a multi-platform binary! How is this possible? Which toolkit are they using?

Based on their Launchpad repository for Ubuntu, they are using Quickly.
For Chrome and Firefox, based on the Nitro GitHub page, it seems that they are just deploying it as a browser plug-in.

I just checked the Nitro website, and it doesn't look like it is a multi-platform binary, after all. It looks like they have a version for Linux/Ubuntu, and also an extension (plugin) for Chrome. They also have a web version and a Firefox plugin, which isn't available yet.

Ok, this isn't exactly an answer to your question, but I am assuming you're asking because you consider doing a similar thing yourself in which case it might be worthwhile to check out http://appjs.org/ which makes exactly this possible. Please do realize a lot might change and you should only use that if and only if you're willing to adapt to those change in the future.

Related

Wrap html/css/js in a webkit executable?

I'm looking to make an executable that will open my web project in a (frameless?) executable, and I'm coming up short on a solution.
The request is simple: I want to be able to package my html/css/js project for distribution. I would like for the renderer to be either webkit or firefox.
Have any of you seen this technology in the wild?
Awesomium is exactly what you're looking for.
I've been using it (the .net distro) for about a year now with great success. It also comes in mac and linux flavors. I'd highly recommend it. Best part is that its free for Indies! :D
http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-choose-html5-for-user.html?m=1
Netflix is doing it for PS3 for example.

GUI Tool to test javascript

I am looking for GUI/Windows based tool to test my javascript code there instead of using firebug or other in-browser tool.
I want to play around with javascript language outside of the browser to learn more about it.
Has anyone come across such tool? I could not find one :(
Edit: I am looking for GUI/Windows based on which can be used even if I am not connected to internet and still play around with javascript.
I'm a big fan of jsFiddle.
jsBin is another option.
Microsoft Web Developer Express is free and has a great JavaScript editor and debugger.
If you're looking for something that you don't need to be connected to the internet for, why can't you just use your browser? I assume you've already got some kind of development platform now. Save to a local HTML file and view it on your local browser.
Do you not have some kind of a GUI development program like DreamWeaver or CODA or something like that? (I'm on a mac, so I'm not familiar with a lot of windows based programs).

Developing FIrebug like web application for CSS things

I am developing a web application for web designing. One part of it includes changing CSS styles on the run and saving the same back to server.
I see that, first part of my motive is implemented there in firebug, where I can view CSS style rules applied to a particular HTML element and can change them to view the effect.
An earlier question at SO lead to me firebug lite source code https://getfirebug.com/firebug-lite-debug.js , which is far less confusing than full version of firebug.
My question was that, is there any way I can get documentation of the firebug/firebug lite code which can speed things up for me.
After some googling I found out that there is Firebug API
http://getfirebug.com/developer/api/firebug1.6/
But don't know how much useful it is for me.
Any alternative way to do this is also welcome.
Firebug uses a BSD-style license, which pretty much means you can use their code in your application without too many restrictions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#Proprietary_software_licenses_compatibility
I would suggest you contact the developers of Firebug directly. I'm sure they would be interested in providing assistance with what you are trying to accomplish.
In my opinion, the ability to sync changes to a file or server is the one thing that's missing from this powerful tool, and I'm interested to see what the final result looks like.
Check out the Backfire project, which "allows you to save CSS changes made with Firebug, Webkit Developer Toolbar or any other clientside debugging tool." The project page says that it was developed to be able to support various backends. The Backfire source code is available under an MIT license.
Submitting a possible answer to my own question.
Found following which gives a small amount of information about Firebug internals.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firebug_internals

Whats the best way to develop javascript?

Im keen on learning javascript and ui design. Im using visual studio 2005 but find it difficult to debug code, I use firebug also. Is there a javascript editor with intellisense out there that I can get for free im have a hard time using the syntax and some of the helper mthods like parseint etc.
Any advice much appreciated.
Cheers
Pq
Visual Studio 2008 has better Javascript support. You can debug it like normal C# code, although it's still buggy sometimes (it doesn't seem to like to set a break point in the first line of a function for example, nested functions give it also a hard time).
Also there is Intellisense support now but it works so-so. It depends a lot on how which JS framework you're going to use.
All in all, VS is surely not the best dev environment for JS around, but maybe the best compromise if you're already familiar with it and developing for .NET anyhow.
I'd say Aptana should work for you. You can install it alone or as an Eclipse plugin.
It features :
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Code Assist
Ajax Libraries
JavaScript Debugging
DOM Outline View
... so it seems like a good fit for your needs.
IntelliJ is a great editor and they now have an open source version.
As well as Aptana (which is great) as suggested by marcgg you might want to try Komodo Edit or Netbeans both of which are also excellent and multi purpose.
Just to add in what will NOT work is your VS2005, see this answer on that.
I prefer any (dev oriented) simple text editor (my choice is TextMate) and FireBug. Or any other browser developer tools (IE8 has it to). Why not use VS/Eclipse/etc? Its too heavy for JavaScript i think.
EDIT: And something like JSBin can help you with little expirinents!
Eclipse for web developers. (see http://www.eclipse.org/)

Palm Pre and Visual Studio. Possible?

The development experience for the Palm Pre sucks, to say the least. At best you are working on JavaScript in Eclipse with the Aptana plugin. The intellisense you get is really, really dismal. You have to be looking at the documentation every 5 seconds.
I was thinking, Visual Studio really excels at JavaScript and intellisense. Has anyone succeeded at writing Palm Pre code in VS2008 with intellisense, which would require hooking in Palm's Mojo Library?
Is there a known way to hook in 3rd party non-source libraries to JavaScript in Vs2008?
I've been looking for alternatives to Eclipse, too, but so far it does not appear that anyone has done it. For myself it felt like too much work, so I just switched to working with several terminal windows open and a browser window to the documentation.
I'm a long time eclipse user but was disappointed in the eclipse environment for Pre - especially after using the Android SDK which hooks nicely into eclipse (then again the dev environment is Java there).
Have you tried Komodo? I switched over to it and the autocompletion is nice and the webos addon does a decent job. I don't have the professional version so I can't comment on the debugging capability which I'd love to have.
If you can tell VS08 you want to load the Mojo.js stuff, then it should work. I think you should be able to configure any custom tools you need for building etc. as well.
Personally I'd recommend you check out JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA. They have really good JavaScript support and I've used it with some Pre-stuff as well.

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