I want to be an Appetize.io(or Browserstack) in China. Should I learn about open source projects or knowledge? - debugging

Appetize.io or Browserstack.com can't access it normally in China, so I want to implement a tool myself. Like Appetize (or Browserstack), I can use my different versions of mobile devices to debug my webpage online, but I don't know where to start. Thank you.

Look at the Network Activity tab of Chrome Dev Tools while you are on the demo page for Appetize.io. You will see a bunch of JPEG images being streamed to the browser as you interact with the device "screen" on the browser. Most likely an emulator/simulator is fired up in the backend and screenshots are taken at regular intervals and streamed to the browser.
That would be a good start. The next thing to look at would be how to capture input (typing and screen taps) on the browser and then "execute" those type/taps on the emulator in the backend.

Related

Cannot start web-simulator on google actions for API.AI project

I am working on Google Cloud Platform to develop a project in API.AI, I have an integration (in API.AI) with Google Actions (for Google Home or Google Assistant), they provide me to see my progress as real time in web-simulator, that you can find here:
https://developers.google.com/actions/tools/web-simulator
I am trying to START the web-simulator clicking on START button, then I get a window pop-up but after open, it closes, I try and try again but I obtain the same result, I cannot open the web-simulator. I have allowed the popup windows in my browser.
Of course I have completed all steps to start web-simulator...
I don't know what is happening. Someone can help me? Thank you, have a good day.
First, are you using a compatible browser? Try it in Chrome if you're
not already using it, as Chrome is a Google product, and so is the
web simulator.
Next, are you using any Ad-Blockers or
Script-Blockers like NoScript? If so, try disabling them, as they
could interfere with the operation of the tool.
If it still doesn't work, try going to an Incognito Windows by pressing the
three dots button and opening a New Incognito Window. Go to the page, and log
in. This will ensure that no cookies are interfering.
At this point, if you're still having issues, try a different browser.
(Either Firefox or Opera)

Chromecast home screen development options?

I've been reading through Google's Chromecast developer documentation and I can't seem to find any developer docs that discuss how to develop customizations for the Chromecast home screen, such as HTML overlays, etc.
There are Chromecast apps available that do show stuff on the Chromecast home screen, such as Dashboard Cast, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rir.dashboardcast&hl=en.
Does anyone know what approaches can be used with the Receiver API to allow this?
You cannot customize the home screen (backdrop); users can change what sort of feeds (images) can be used to be shown there. You, as a developer, do not have control over that and if it seems that some developers have customized that, in reality they have not; they are running an app there (like any other chromecast app).

Remote Screen Sharing in realtime like SharedView, TeamViewer

What technologies would I need to know to write an app like the now defunct Microsoft SharedView or something like TeamViewer? Any way to do it with a browser and not need a client app?
I'm a .NET developer, but figure I'd need to know C++ or driver stuff?
How would you stream the users desktop to another user? How do you even capture it in realtime?
I can imagine how you could take screenshots of the desktop and transfer them, but how do you capture live video of the screen of application and stream it to another user.
There are many apps that do this: Skype, GotoMeeting, TeamViewer, SharedView, Citrix, logmein, etc. but I'd like to write my own.
How would I get this to work on Windows, tablets, droids, etc...?
The browser seems to be a good platform for this, but there are some limitations
1 - flash doesn't work at all on IOS, and is not widely available on android.
2- Webrtc works with chrome, firefox and opera on mac/pc/linux, and with firefox/chrome on android. There's librairies to use webrtc from an IOS native app(in objective C). Screen Sharing on the other hand only works with chrome (pc/mac/linux). There's a work in progress in firefox.
3- Installation of browser plugins will be hard if not impossible on various platforms, but it can open some possibility : on chrome and firefox you can make them with javascript. For example a javascript extention can share a tab in chrome.
Using javascript you can stream from a desktop to any other desktop / android.

Detect the open url in Windows Mobile

What I want to do is have a background running app on Windows Mobile that can detect when a specific url is opened and perform some task. About the only way I can think of is to watch the cache directory and look for files specific to the site. There might be a way with IE to get the open url information but I doubt it would work the same for Opera. Another way might be with the querying the open processes because there might be url information in the title bar.
I can always have the user turn my app on and off when they go to my site or have the app open the site when they run it but I would like to avoid any extra steps for the user.
Can you think of anyway to detect the open url? Thanks for any help.
I think you're looking at the wrong end. Don't look at it from above the app, but rather from below. I'd create an NDIS intermediate passthrough driver (the PASSTHRU example that ships with Platform Builder would be a really good starting point) that watches network activity and looks for HTTP GET requests much like a packet sniffer would. It would be easy to extract the URIs from the packets at that point and you would be able to definitively watch the requests no matter what browser they use.

Communicating with users on other web pages

This question is part user experience, part engineering.
I am trying to find a nice, clean way to have a user communicate with my web page while they are on another web page. I have web services that will accept HTTP POST/GET, so AJAX and other asynchronous niceties are welcome - don't worry about the details of their communication, they can easily be modified to fit a solution.
The problem I'm running into lies within the user interaction. Ex., say the user is viewing a web page and they want to send my system the web site's URL. I would like it if they could do it while still looking at that page, and without too many "crazy clicks" - currently they have to go back over to my page and enter the information (as you can imagine this has tested horribly).
I have ruled out browser tool bars (easy to do in FF, but a lot of my users use IE) and local applications (they won't want to install Java or Adobe Air apps).
Have you ever solved a problem like this before, or do you have an idea of how I could solve it? Should I be looking at separate solutions for FF and IE (ex., a tool bar for FF and something else for IE)? Don't worry about Safari and Chrome, though a solution that supports them too would be nifty.
Thanks.
p.s. The user would have an account on my system already.
Have you thought about something like the Digg Bar?
Users can access it through a bookmarklet, or you can do a url prefix like http://yoursite.com/<other_site_url>. When users click links, the bar stays active.
What if you wrote a system tray application. Something similar to Pixel Ruler
This could sit in their tray, and it would know you're website. That would eliminate browser toolbars, and could conceivably work on several browsers. You could probably even set it up as an install if they visit your website.
Then you could expose a webservice on your site that this control would pass back info to (like the user's name, current website, etc)
I don't know about the details of your application, but the only solution I can imagine is that you have a page split into two frames, with your toolbar at the top. stumbleupon.com does this, but it makes sense because they're providing the web content.
Simply, your users would have to visit your site before they could do their own browsing. Is that reasonable for your project? That sounds like it could be a user experience disaster of its own. Also, if most of your users are using IE, I'm going to assume that they're not the most web savvy users out there.

Resources