QNAP Web UI - How to get the windows in a web app? - user-interface

I am learning to write web apps. I am currently working on a project and recently purchased a QNAP Nas unit. The web UI for the admin settings is perfect for what I would like, but I don't know how to do the windows thing.
Basically you have a menu on the left of the web UI and when you select an admin option it opens a window that you can move around and minimize etc within the app. Does anyone know what technology this is? I don't mind RTFM but I jsut need to know what to read. I have googled and cannot find anything on whatever it is, probably because I don't know what to google for.
Something like this:
If anyone can point me in the right direction of what I can google or read up on that would be great.

You need JavaScript application framework for building interactive cross platform web applications using techniques such as Ajax, DHTML and DOM scripting.
QNAP is using extJS.
Web Desktop demo using extJS that you were looking for.

Related

Is it possible to detect if user use our PWA from desktop or from mobile?

I'm working on PWA, this is my first try with it. I have done the tutorial https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/your-first-pwapp/ and few research but I didn't found anything about my problem : I would like to know if the user is using the app from his desktop or from a mobile, and then, if he uses the app from a desktop, change the start url (in order to go to a real website). Do someone have a clue ?

Wrapper around web-app under Windows

I have an application with web interface. Unfortunately, it has all disadvantages of being a web page:
It doesn't have a standalone window, so users cannot manage it via the taskbar.
Users see the address line with something like 'http://localhost:8080' that is not a good idea for home users.
If users click on a tray icon, there is no way to activate the tab in a browser, which contain the application interface.
So, it would be nice to have a wrapper application with a browser within.
In case of IE I know it's possible to create a window with Trident ActiveX component. But what if it's Windows XP with IE6 but installed latest Chrome? I'd like to prefer Chrome since it supports a lot more features which the user will never see.
So, is there a way to wrap a page into Chrome/Firefox and make it look like a standalone application, if one of them is presented in the user's system? (The application shouldn't install anything large, so Chromium build is not an option).
P.S. I'm not interested in supporting other platforms than Windows.
Regards,
Take a look at Chrome Apps.
I hope helps you.

Firefox extension app hosted on server

I managed to create a Chrome extension pretty easy and the main application is hosted on my server allowing me to provide updates to the app itself without having to update the whole extension. I like the idea and I just want to know if it's possible to create a similar extension for Firefox where the main application is hosted on a live server.
In creating my Chrome extension, I followed a tutorial. The code for Chrome is included on the linked page.
It's possible to create a simple extension that loads a web app either in a panel or a tab. You should read up on the Addon SDK documentation, including the panel, tabs and getting started docs.
There is nothing wrong with this, as the web app would not have direct access to internal Firefox APIs. If you read the Addon guidelines closely that #makyen links to above, none of it covers this implementation detail. In their defence, they seem to have misinterpreted what you want to do. It looks to me like you just want to integrate / launch your web app from the browser UI?
Web application:
After finding the tutorial (please provide a link next time) I surmise you are referring to in your question, I suspect that what you are actually attempting to convey is different than how I initially interpreted your question. I have edited the question to make this more clear to people reading it in the future.
That tutorial is explaining how to place a link to a web application into the Chrome user interface. Such is, to a large extent, just a bookmark that is able to be placed within other areas of the user interface than the bookmarks bar.
If that is what you are wanting to do, then, yes, you can easily do so in Firefox. Given that the extension is not running external content in the security context of an extension (you are effectively just navigating to and displaying a website), then that should be fine as a Firefox extension. Note that you need to be sure that you are not granting elevated permissions when you launch the web application.
If running a web application is what you are wanting to do, then I suggest you might want to use different semantics to refer to what you are doing. The above is not a "Firefox extension app hosted on server". Saying it that way strongly implies that you are hosting the actual extension code on your own server. The rest of your question implies that the extension dynamically loads external code and runs it. I would suggest that you refer to it as something like: a web application that is launched (navigated to) by a Firefox extension allowing the web application to be started from an icon in the toolbar.
Extension running web sourced code:
However, if what you are wanting to do is have external content running as a Firefox extension, then implementing that functionality is a large security hole for anyone installing the extension. Even assuming that your intentions are totally benign, there is a huge security hole for anyone who is intercepting your traffic, or gains control of your server to inject code into Firefox that runs at the level of an extension (i.e. the malware can have full control of the browser and then of the computer).
Yes, it is currently possible for you to write this for Firefox.
However, given that the extension pulls code from something not packaged within the extension, the extension will never be permitted to be hosted on AMO.
In addition, the plan is that later this year there will be mandatory signing of Firefox extensions through Mozilla. I doubt that an extension like this will be permitted at that time.
You can read a set of Add-on guidelines on MDN.

Allow admins to publish html via Windows Live Writer and/or Word

Currently I have a WYSIWYG editor for admins to post HTML pages on an MVC3 website (with forms authentication.) However I saw this video (~4:45 mins in, if it doesn't take you there,) where a person is able to publish to the MVC3 site by clicking the publish button on Windows Live Writer (and maybe Word, but I don't have either to confirm or play around with;) and everything was published quite easily.
I looked into this cool feature of these programs, but wasn't able to find any information on how to implement it on an MVC3 website. I saw some info on how to use this with Blogger or WordPress, but not MVC (it doesn't help that I don't have either Live Writer or Word on my windows system.)
So I'm asking if anyone knows how to do this, can you point me to a tutorial about this Windows editor feature and how to use it in an MVC3 program? Thanks!
Here you go, courtesy of Scott Hanselman.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheWeeklySourceCode55NotABlogALocalXMLRPCMetaWebLogEndpointThatLiesToWindowsLiveWriter.aspx

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.

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