I stumbled upon the mx ui toolkit that provides clutter based high level widgets: think buttons, listviews, etc but opengl accelerated thanks to clutter.
This library was developed for the moblin/meego platform.
The status of the library is a bit mysterious: while the library reached 1.0 the source hasn't been updated after 2012.
Finding any code sample beyond the api documentation is not easy and there is dead links at ever corner, even in the source repository hosted on gitorious (that will close soon).
What is the status of mx library? Where is the official source repository? Is there any tutorial available?
edit: the code sits in clutter's github repository. The last commit
dates back to Sept, 2013
The Mx library is completely unmaintained, and it has not been updated past the demise of the MeeGo user experience for netbooks, which is why it was created. Even then, it was not really a general purpose toolkit for applications, but a simple toolkit for implementing the desktop shell. Mx was later used as the toolkit for the Media Explorer project — but, again, it never was meant to be used a general purpose toolkit.
Given its state, Mx has not been updated after the various Clutter deprecations, so it's not entirely guaranteed to work with Clutter ≥ 1.10.
Related
The readme.md at https://github.com/NativeScript/windows-runtime says that the Windows runtime for Nativescript is in proof of concept stage, and then lists what I understand to be very deep language features that are not implemented yet.
The tone on the https://www.nativescript.org/blog/nativescript-runtime-preview-for-windows-10 announcement seems a bit more enthusiastic about the current feature set.
Being able to use Nativescript on Windows Phone (and any other platform) is incredibly appealing.
TJ, a core team member, recently posted on the forums about this:
Hey #NezzaGrey,
Thanks for reaching out, and awesome that you’re liking NativeScript :smile:. >Straight to the point though—we’re not actively working on UWP support because >1) it’s a ton of work to add a new platform and commit to supporting that >platform indefinitely, and 2) we’re not seeing nearly enough demand from our >community to justify taking on that work.
That doesn’t mean that UWP support in NativeScript will never happen, but it’s >not coming in the short term because we’re just not seeing the demand. That can >always change though. I’d encourage you to add your use case to the GitHub >issue open for adding UWP support in NativeScript: >https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript/issues/254. Yes, the issue is >somewhat ancient, but we really do pay attention to well-thought-out comments >during roadmap discussions.
I’ll note two other things. First, our initial work on making a Windows runtime >is completely open source and available on GitHub: >https://github.com/NativeScript/windows-runtime. We’d love to have community >?>help to make the new runtime a reality.
Second, one option you have is to build your iOS and Android apps with >NativeScript and Angular, and to use our code sharing approaches (see ?>https://www.nativescript.org/blog/code-sharing-between-web-and-mobile-with->angular-and-nativescript1) to share your Angular code with other apps. You >could take that approach to share Angular code between your NativeScript apps >and your UWP apps if you use something like Electron. This approach isn’t >ideal, as you’d probably prefer to build a completely native UWP app, but it’s >something to consider if you’re open to using Electron.
Anyways, hopefully you found some of this helpful. If you have any other >questions feel free to follow up.
Source: https://discourse.nativescript.org/t/windows-uwp-support/2659/3
We have an existing cross-platform Mobile Application, that also has an accompanying web application, that uses AWS as a back end (RDS for Database, Four server instances, and a Load Balancer to distribute traffic). APK and IPA files are packaged and sent to the stores, while components are retrieved from our server per request, which enables us to reduce the number of store builds, and make the process easier for getting changes out to clients.
We are at the stage of Development that we need to move to another platform to better facilitate our fast growing client base.
Due to the conditions upon our clients, these things must be considered.
must be cross platform (Android / iOS).
must be offline based (users need to be able to access without an internet connection)
must be able to sync with an existing database when there is a connection
requires Authentication
Cloud based (? may not be the right term, but meaning the ability for us to store components on a server and have a device check for updates and download a local copy - enabling us to work and distribute fixes faster)
Ideally compatible with AWS
We are currently looking at Xamarin to facilitate us for this move, however there is a lot of documentation and plugins out there to do all sorts of different things.
As developers, we all have some .net / c# experience, however none particularly with Xamarin.
We have a particular timeline that we need to adhere to (and need to ramp up in the next couple of weeks), and right now are essentially stuck in Limbo in a research phase, as we can't afford to get some things right. We are unable to move forward until we know Xamarin (or some other framework) is able to do everything that we need it to do.
It's hard to escape from the 'code it all ourselves' mentality - especially as we don't know where to start looking in terms of third party packages for Xamarin, and their documentation itself.
A lot of documentation mentions various systems of Azure - we would not be against moving to Azure over AWS if it _had to be done*, but because of the existing infrastructure with AWS - staying with AWS is obviously the preferred option (users need to access the current system whilst we build the new system)
This stack overflow post is to ask for recommendations, comments, or other observations on anything and everything involved with the process in regards to choosing frameworks, design patterns, methodologies, third party packages, etc.
Obviously we would like to use best practises for everything moving forward for optimum scalability and cleaner, more robust code. It's just hard to know where to start!
Any input will be highly appreciated.
Cheers!
edit: I am aware that this is 'asking for recommendations' which is 'specifically off-topic'. I have read the posting guidelines about open ended discussion, and am quite confident that this case is different. There is an underlying problem here, in that we are seeking advice on combinations of frameworks and plugins that are fully compatible with all of the items in the list (above)
Let's try to breakdown each of your requirement and constraint mentioned in the question.
1. You need a offline first architecture (With Sync mechanism)
Xamarin + Azure would make a good comdo for you, as it would support offline storage out of box (With a simple PullAsync call).
Albeit there are AWS SDK available for Xamarin. Here it goes http://docs.aws.amazon.com/mobile/sdkforxamarin/developerguide/setup.html
So the call is yours. There are few other ways to achieve caching offline storage in Xamarin, you can build upon those strategy in your logic. Alternatively there is a very interesting C# library Akavache for caching and offline storage.
2. OAuth 2.0 Authentication
Xamarin has a very good library named Xamarin.Auth. Though I would not say it is very easily extendible at this but there has been some serious work going on from Xamarin on this library.
But I would say it is very easy to use. The apps I have developed so far that includes - Google OAuth, Facebook integration, Microsoft account integration. It worked fine for all of them.
3. Cloud based distribution
There are nice tools available with Microsoft. Which makes the distribution easy. Have a look at https://mobile.azure.com . Also hockeyApp is good for distribution I found.
Where to start:
A very good starting point for you would be https://channel9.msdn.com . Just go there search with keyword "Xamarin" and view some videos. May be all these cross platform dynamics will be much easier for you.
Overall I found Xamarin a cool product to work with. Because anything that can be done in native Objective C/Swift or Java can very well be done in Xamarin using C#.
I am trying to handle an event for when a PDF has downloaded and been fully displayed in Internet Explorer.
Which UIAutomation event will handle this?
If you are referring to the UIAutomation object in the .NET Framework, it supports managed code. Internet Explorer is written in C++ as unmanaged code. Some folks have managed to write extensions using managed code, in spite of clear advice to the contrary, however, I've not heard of anyone successfully controlling IE using managed code.
Earlier versions of IE could be automated using COM interfaces or VBA objects, however, these features have been increasing deprecated over the years.
In addition, few of those interfaces supported extensions. (PDF is not a natively supported file type for Internet Explorer, so automation would depend on the surfaces exposed by the application registered to handle PDF mime types for the individual user.)
Since Edge is now the official browser, it's unlikely that IE will be updated to support managed code extensions. Note that Edge does not currently support extensions and little information is available describing when, or if, that will change. (There have been vague promises in the past, but little additional information.)
If you're trying to accomplish a specific effect, consider posting a more specific question, one showing:
The code that you're trying to use,
The effect you're trying to achieve, and
The behavior you're seeing instead.
Hope this helps...
-- Lance
Maybe I have't looked hard enough, but I spent yesterday googling for a bit and found no relevant projects on hacking the DJI Phantom Drone in order to create new coordinating apps. This is besides the app for coordination DJI currently uses for their drone. I'm trying to see if there's a way to communicate with the Drone with a specific protocol in order to accept a set of procedures.
Any help would be awesome,
Thanks.
Great News for you and all us Droneys! DJI has launched their SDK since you asked this question. They released it last November and you can now apply for a license and write your own apps for the Phantom2 Vision+ using their SDK.
Check it out at https://developer.dji.com/
I am already building a project using the SDK - you can follow my progress on my blog / product site. I will also try to update it with good DJI related development links and tips.
This post is old but I think it is good to leave a foot print for others :)
There is this new company called NVdrones, which created a peace of hardware that you can attach to any drone (you need physical access to the flight controller), and once you do that you can use their SDK (Arduino, Java, Android and Javascript) to write your app without the need of hacking, soldering or anything else. It is just plug and play.
Another benefit is that you are not locked with a specific drone (DJI SDK or 3DRobotics SDK), you can use the board on anything you want. Which gives lots of flexibility.
The developer site is http://developers.NVdrones.com
Hope this helps.
This is a great topic!
You could check how to hack your copter here: https://github.com/flyver/Flyver-SDK/wiki/-2.2--How-To:-Flyver-Hack-a-Copter
By opening the drone, taking out the original controller, soldering a few wires and sticking an Android phone to it, you will have the ability to program your Phantom in a modern manner with an open source SDK and application based development. This means that you could add computer vision to it, automation or additional hardware. You could also use smartphones, web and other interactive devices for remote controlling the copter instead of using the standard remote controls.
The Phantom, however, is offcenter balanced due to the fact that most people use gimbal with it. Without the gimbal is a lot less stable from my experiments so you will have to put some extra work in center balancing it.
What's your experience in using web technologies (HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript) to implement part of the functionality of a GUI application? Pros and cons, please.
No servers, relational databases, AJAX, or cookies for session management, nor an existing webapp either, but rather a GUI app that uses web widgets (like Qt WebKit) to render and handle substantial parts of the UI, while taking advantage of a GUI framework to achieve an even richer interaction and better desktop integration.
I've already validated that the approach is possible using PyQt. Content can be rendered from the file system or from strings, and URL requests (images or clicks) can be captured and served by the form's event handlers. CSS and JavaScript are supported, perhaps with some limitations.
# ...
self.webView.page().setLinkDelegationPolicy(
QtWebKit.QWebPage.DelegateExternalLinks
)
#...
class TotiMainWindow(QtGui.QMainWindow):
def linkClicked(self, url):
pass # events arrive here
Note: This question is different from this one and this one made before, among other things because there is no requirement to use web technologies on the GUI, but there is the requirement that the application should work without a network connection available, and should integrate well with the default desktop over different platforms, without previous infrastructure requirements (no .NET, Java, browsers, or database servers).
Note: I posted a different version of this question on PMS but found very little experience with this approach there.
Closing Note
I just found most of the information I was looking for in a series of blog posts by André Pareis.
I think the largest advantage to using web markup like HTML/CSS and other web technologies is that desktop apps may very well have their days numbered.
As we speak, Google engineers are working on the Chromium OS, which essentially consists of a single GUI application... the browser...
Now, while nothing may never actually come of it, there is clearly a rising trend in the number of applications accessible through a web browser, accessible anywhere. It seems to me that this is the future of application development.
By using these technologies, this becomes one less headache you have to deal with when or if you determine that your app should be available as a web application.
Update: A few years ago, we developed an Agent Desktop for our call center that is essentially a local application that opens sockets to integrate with the phone system. The user interface the agents use is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and the experience is stunning. When we released our latest update in 2010 with a professional CSS redesign, our agents were all very impressed with not only how easy it was to interact but also how easy it was to use.
In the future we will port this 100% to the browser, but for now it needs to be a local application because of the COM integration with the phone system.
We did exactly this for a project back when Windows XP was new.
This gave my team several benefits:
A good-looking UI with relatively little effort
Easily change the style of the UI in a consistent manner using CSS
Relatively simple integration with C++ (invoking functions from the ui and vice versa)
The drawbacks we saw were:
Some not-so-good firewalls considered accessing internal resources (ie other html pages in the ui) to be a web request
Adding and accessing the needed resources could in some cases be a bit cumbersome
It was possible set properties in Internet Explorer that would prevent JS from running in the application
Note that some of Windows XP:s programs are using this approach.
This probably works best with small, more Wizard-like parts of the ui (which our ui consisted almost entirely of).
I have since then not really been involved in ui projects, so I cannot really tell you whether this approach is still valid... I know that MFC-based applications will let you use HTML-based dialogs though.
In a similar situation in 2005 I created a stand-alone webapp using XForms, CSS, JavaScript, XML and XML Schema for offline data retrieval and verification. With a good XForms -> HTML + JS transformer (Chiba) it did the job with no bug fixes after the initial release. It was used for 6-12 months (IIRC) by about a dozen engineers for a project gathering test data in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. The biggest surprise of that project was just how much you get for free when going for a web platform, even for offline use. Highly recommended.
The major problem is that it reduces your development speed, or the quality of your user interface. A lot. Unless you're using Seaside, it is much faster to develop a desktop app.
There is quite some number of applications built on top of Mozilla platform. It isn't 100% web technology, as instead of HTML you use XML based XUL, but the rest is indeed web stack (JavaScript, CSS). The most successful of these it the OpenKomodo and it's commercial big brother Komodo IDE.
On the other hand, as far as Qt goes, the newest version 4.7 you can build GUI using QML language. Don't let the name mislead you, it's not markup, it acctually JavaScript with app-specific extensions.