I'm currently working on a project where I have firefox launching in one of three modes:
normal
full - kiosk mode with only tabs, and home back and forward navigation showing.
Super - kiosk mode no tabs or anything showing just the content window (true kiosk mode)
Now due to time constraints I have implemented via pygtk rather than creating a custom Firefox extension as the requirements of the project would require a new flag adding to the command line in order to identify what mode it was to launch in. The approach I have used works beautifully, Great. . .
However the problem now is how can I disable all of the hot keys i.e. Ctrl + T, etc, without writing a extension. I am unable to use an existing extension because I need the shortcuts available when firefox is in normal mode and as firefox (for the project) can only be started via the command line programatically I would need a flag to determine weather to restrict the hot keys or not.
I was hoping to be able to achieve this using user.js which is placed programatically into the correct profiles when they are created in another bit of my application. I have tried using user.js by modifying accelKey, chromeAccess, contentAccess, generalAccessKey and menuAccessKey and setting their values to 0, which works for menu access but not for anything else.
Finally the Question
Is it possible to disable all shortcuts from user.js or can you only do it through an extension?
No, you cannot disable shortcut keys via preferences. Not all shortcut keys use the configurable Accel modifier, but even the ones that do cannot be disabled via preferences. In case you are interested, the code handling them only recognizes Meta, Alt and Ctrl as valid values, with Ctrl being the default for inputs that aren't recognized. You can try using Meta (the corresponding code is 224), it seems unmapped on PC keyboard. For anything more fancy than that you will need an extension.
I apologize if this sounds like an ad instead of an answer, it's not meant to.
If you do have time constraints and you just want to get a hold of the code you need, there is an open source kiosk project called Webconverger that has already done a lot of the heavy lifting.
Related
We have this problem where a Farsi UTF-8 text that is programmatically copied from an electron application, loses encoding when pasted into one specific application and is displayed as a set of ? characters. The issue persists even with manual text selection and copy command invoked via either context menu or Ctrl+C. Texts copied from other sources such as browsers or text editors are transferred just fine.
We tried clipboard API of electron. We also implemented our own helper to verify the issue is not with the clipboard itself.
We also prepended the text with UTF-8 BOM character before writing it to the clipboard.
One interesting observation was that once the text is pasted into some text editor and then recopied, target app received the text properly. We also noticed that changing the keyboard layout to target language when the electron app is focused, resolves the issue as well. In addition, we realized that Windows changes default keyboard layout to English when the application is launched.
Following on these clues, we configured NSIS bundler to set the default language to Persian so that maybe Windows detects it as default keyboard language as well. Description of the application shows Persian as the language but Windows does not respect it and reverts the language to system default upon launch.
We tried running a script on application startup to mimic a Farsi character keyboard input, creating temporary input fields, and a set of other hacks to maybe trick the Windows/application into properly handling these texts. Keep in mind we can't rely on user to perform idiotic actions on every application launch, to fix a problem that shouldn't exist in first place. That's why we need this issue to be resolved programmatically.
Right now the only solution that comes to mind is to force Windows to set the keyboard layout for our application to Persian via registry entries by some separate script that user need to run only once, or can be run after each installation. I'm not familiar with the windows registry entries. My searches came up empty and the results were focused on how to do it for the whole system, but we don't wanna mess with their whole system configurations since.
Any other suggestions regarding this issue is highly appreciated.
Other information that you might find relevant:
OS is Windows 7.
Target app is an accounting software and the vendor rejects to provide any support with the integration, so I have very little information about inner workings of that application.
html lang attribute of electron template is set to fa.
meta charset attribute is set to utf-8.
Application is bundled with electron-builder and NSIS.
I'm using Win7 but looking for a cross os solution, but this isnt even working in my Win7. I'm trying to change the icon of just the current profile. So what i did was:
I created shortcut of firefox.exe and moved it to my documents
right click on this shortcut and then changed icon
but in firefox the taskbar shows normal firefox icon and so does the top left icon (see attached image plz)
How can I change this icon?
Thanks
Here's another topic i made on ask.m.o trying to ask the same thing: https://ask.mozilla.org/question/725/custom-icon-per-profile/
As of Firefox 57, this is not possible from an extension.
WebExtensions do not permit the window icon to be changed from an extension.
Prior to Firefox 57 (or non-release versions w/ legacy add-ons)
The combination of the title of your question and the text of your question make it unclear what you desire to accomplish.
If your goal is to dynamically change the window icon of a currently running Firefox process then you will need to follow something along the lines of the second or third method listed in nmaier's answer.
If you goal is to always have a different, static icon used for the primary Firefox windows for a specific profile, that is quite easy.
You will need icon files of the appropriate format for each architecture for which you desire this to work.
The following assumes Windows, it is easily expanded to other architectures by including an icon file with the same name, but appropriate file extension and format.
Create a simple overlay, extracted extension. You will need a minimum of 2 files:
<extension-dir>instal.rdf
<extension-dir>\chrome\icons\default\main-window.ico
Example, fully functional, install.rdf:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<RDF xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:em="http://www.mozilla.org/2004/em-rdf#">
<Description about="urn:mozilla:install-manifest">
<em:id>window-icon-change#nowhere.foo</em:id>
<em:version>1.0.0</em:version>
<em:name>Window icon change</em:name>
<em:description>Change the Firefox main window icon.</em:description>
<em:creator>Makyen</em:creator>
<em:unpack>true</em:unpack>
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>3.0a1</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>43.0a1</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>
</Description>
</RDF>
NOTE: The "<extension-dir>\chrome\icons\default\" directory is different than the one in the response by nmaier. In that answer the "icons" and "default" directories reversed and will be non-functional.
You will probably want an additional file:
<extension-dir>chrome.manifest
The chrome.manifest file is not required. However, not having it may result in a single line being printed to the error/browser console (if you even have that open). If the chrome.manifest file exists, even if zero length, there will be no complaint in the console that the file could not be read.
Install the extension. The easy way to do this is to create a zip file with those three files; then change the file extension to .xpi; then drag and drop it onto a Firefox window running the profile in which you desire it to be installed.
You can expand this to include icons for whatever sub-windows you desire. You will need to determine the ID for each sub-window. The icon file name is just the window ID with the appropriate extension for an icon in the architectures you desire. "main-window" is just the ID for the main Firefox browser window.
Creating an extension to test this took less than 5 minutes. You should find it reasonably easy to accomplish.
This assumes that there is not a custom main-window icon located at (Windows, default install location):
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\chrome\icons\default
as that directory is for all profiles and is searched first.
This will not work if the extension is either restartless or extractionless.
You can find a brief amount of information about window icons on MDN. nmaier mentions the docs talking about bundles. When talking about Mozilla add-ons, a bundle is your add-on package.
The icon file(s) will be at (Windows):
<profile dir>\extensions\<extension-dir>\chrome\icons\default*
Once the extension is installed, you can change it/them manually without re-installing, if desired.
Add-ons created to solve this
Based on the discussion in the comments, I created a Firefox Add-on to allow setting the window icons for the profile. It is much expanded upon the 5 minute add-on mentioned in the comments. The addition is entirely in a UI for the options dialog for selecting the icon to use and assigning it to the various different windows Firefox opens. You can get it from Mozilla Add-ons under Change Profile's Window Icons. Unfortunately, it's not possible for that add-on to function as of Firefox 48 which requires add-ons to be signed. To dynamically change the icon requires changing files which must be signed. Thus it's not possible to dynamically change the icon with add-on signing required.
Instead I created a few add-ons which statically change the window icon. You can find them on AMO.
Well, there are some ways that spring to mind, but all with their own issues:
Using Window Icons provided by an add-on you install into the profile (the docs talk about bundles, but add-on can also use this technique). The add-on must be em:unpack and have the icon(s) in chrome/default/icons exactly. It is possible that the Firefox in question has an own set of icons bundled in the $appdir/chrome/default/icons, in particular on *nix and since they are checked first, they will be used instead of the add-on provided add-ons. So while this approach works for custom add-on windows, it might not for built-in ones.
Copy and patch Firefox itself, aka. the sledgehammer approach. Different for each platform (e.g. under Windows you'd have to swap out the icon resource of the firefox.exe).
Create a tool that will switch out the icons of a running window. There is no code to do so in Firefox that would be accessible from javascript, so you need to go binary and platform-specific, e.g. WM_SETICON on Windows.
Edit 1:
Actually, thinking more about it, I'd install an add-on with some platform-specific js-ctypes code that would then switch out the icons, e.g. the already mentioned WM_SETICON on Windows.
Usually you'll need a window handle for the platform APIs, which Firefox refuses to provide to JS. But as a workaround for that:
Store the window title.
Set the window title to a new uuid.
Call a platform API to find the new uuid titled window handle (FindWindow on Windows). mintrayr uses this scheme for Windows/Gnome(GTK/GDK), also not in js-ctypes.
Restore the window title.
Load/transform the icon file to something the platform supports (HICON on windows). I once had a patch somewhere on bugzilla that enabled loading of arbitrary images as window icons FWIW, but let it slide. Should be still somewhere and could give pointers.
Switch the icon using the obtained handle. E.g. Sending two WM_SETICON for small/big icon on Windows.
Edit 2
Turns out nsIBaseWindow exposes a nativeHandle these days, as I learned from your other question. so the window-title–hack isn't needed any longer. However, nativeHandle might be an 64-bit pointer, which isn't really supported in JS land without some trickery... Better not parseInt it... Also js numbers are floats.
ctypes.voidptr_t(ctypes.UInt64(nativeHandle)) should work, though.
On Mac OS X, this Firefox plugin will do just that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fosx-label/. Also on GitHub: https://github.com/jf/fosx-label. Thanks to Noitidart for pointing out this very useful plugin.
Tested on Yosemite 10.10.5 and it works perfectly!
I've got two keyboards attached to my computer. A normal full-size keyboard and a numeric keypad. I want to "remap" the keys on the numeric keypad, but leave the full keyboard alone. So, when the user presses "5" on the keypad it would get remapped to the "Media Play" key, but if the same "5" was pressed on the keypad of the full keyboard, I'd get a "5". In essence, I want to turn that seperate numeric keypad into a media control device.
Unfortunately I'm not sure how to make this work. There is a "Raw Input" feature of Windows which allows to distinguish between keyboards, but that only allows to read the keys - not remap them. There are keyboard hooks (low level and high level) which can remap the keystrokes, but they don't distinguish between keyboards.
Can I make a combination of the two methods work? For that I'd have to be sure that the raw input message is processed before the keyboard hook kicks in. Is that so?
Also, I've read that Windows for some reason does not allow to use Raw Input and Keyboard Hooks in the same process. I could work around that by making 2 different processes, but that becomes more fragile because of communication latency (keyboard hooks have very limited time in which they must complete their work).
Is this doable at all?
In the end it turned out I needed a custom keyboard driver to accomplish this. Fortunately I found one ready for taking - Interception. The app is ready and works perfectly. :)
I wanted to expand on the answer by Vilx as I've revisited this post several times, and I've only just managed to remap my second keyboard so the keys act uniquely. This is done using Interception and Intercept together, and it's the only working solution that I've managed to get working so far.
I'm also looking into using a raspberry pi to remap a second keyboard. Although early days, I think it it's achievable: Plug keyboard into Pi, plug Pi into PC and write script to turn input keycodes into customized output commands / keycodes. Will update when I have tested.
My working Intercept solution is completely based on a Github tutorial by TaranVH which details the process the best so far. I've copied his solution below with some amends of my own.
DOWNLOADING INTERCEPTION:
Navigate to this page: https://github.com/oblitum/Interception
Click on "download the latest release."
Click on Interception.zip to download it.
Unzip the file to a folder on your computer - I recommend using a folder location that won't ever move. I put my Interception folder into C:\Program Files\ and I'll be using this location in my examples.
INSTALLING INTERCEPTION:
Open a terminal as administrator and type cd "C:\Program Files\Interception\command line installer"
Hit Enter
Now, type in the following line of text exactly as shown:
install-interception.exe /install
Hit Enter
Once the program installs sucessfully, you still must restart your computer in order to complete the installation.
(If you ever want to UNinstall interception, watch this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn18vv--sFY
INSTALLING INTERCEPT - (This is different from intercepTION!)
Download Kamaz's intercept.exe zip from one of these locations:
http://octopup.org/img/code/interception/intercept.zip
https://github.com/TaranVH/2nd-keyboard/blob/master/Intercept/intercept.exe
Unzip it if it's a .zip file and locate intercept.exe
To keep these files all in one place, I moved intercept.exe into C:\Program Files\Interception\
Reboot your system.
SETTING UP INTERCEPT
Plug in your second keyboard and ensure that it is working normally.
Go to where you saved intercept.exe and double click to open.
Intercept will open as a terminal, and from there you should have basic instructions to start remapping your keyboard.
Type a to add a key.
On the SECONDARY keyboard, press the Q key once. (this is the key that you are remapping)
You will be prompted with Enter combo for this trigger, end with ESC.
Carefully execute the following keystrokes (it doesn't matter which keyboard): Win + E (That is: hold down the windows key while pressing the letter E. I've found you need to do this quickly and accurately, if you hold down too long, extra keypresses are added)
When I did it, this was shown in the terminal: [Left Windows]↓ [E]↓ [E]↑ [Left Windows]↑
Press Esc and you will be prompted to label the script
I labelled mine Q->WinE so I knew what it was doing.
Press Enter to accept the label
Press S to save the filter, or C to cancel if you made a mistake.
Add more filters or close the terminal.
USING INTERCEPT
Now you've set up a custom key command, you need to apply the filter to use it.
Open up intercept.exe
Press Y to apply the filters, you will get confirmation that the filters have been activated.
Now, when you press Q on your second keyboard, Intercept will change the command to Win+E which will open File Explorer.
Caveat:
Please read TaranVH githubs page on this https://github.com/TaranVH/2nd-keyboard/tree/master/Intercept as it provides some further details and troubleshooting.
Please take care to follow the instructions very exactly as there's very little error handling in this process
In this article http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/remap-keyboard.htm is explained how to remap keys of a keyboard. Hope that helps.
We've got several web-based applications that are launched from our ERP system (SAP R/3 in this case, but since we're using ShellExec, I don't consider this a SAP issue). The problem is that we can either set the IE to "open every URL passed from the ERP system in a new window" or to "reuse any one of the existing IE windows" (same problem with tabs). Both settings are not acceptable for our users: one of the web applications is a rather bulky medical image viewer applet that wreaks havoc if invoked multiple times. The other option is a no-go either because this way opening the image browser for a patient automatically displaces the lab result display for the very same patient and vice versa.
I'd like to have some control over which window may or may not be reused. My idea would be a kind of "window tag" and a helper program that checks if a window with that tag exists - if it does, reuse it, if not create it. So basically
IELauncher SEARCH http://www.google.com
would open a new window and tag it as SEARCH.
IELauncher DEVEL http://stackoverflow.com
would open a second window, tagging it as DEVEL. Then
IELauncher SEARCH http://www.wikipedia.org
would replace the contents of the first (google) window only.
Is this possible at all? Do you have any pointers for me where to start? I don't even know what to look for...
I had to resort to some rather ugly methods - dynamically assembling a HTML page that uses JavaScript and window.open() to open and access a window by name, then close the page executing the JavaScript. Ugly, but at least this way you get the additional benefit of being able to control certain aspects of the browser window like switching of the menu bar, toolbar and location bar.
I'm building some code completion style text expansion functionality for text areas and inputs in a web application. I'm trying to work out a safe keyboard shortcut for invoking the completion proposals for browsers running on Mac OS X.
I've eliminated some potential candidates:
Command + Space - activates the Spotlight search field
Control + Space - activates the context menu in Firefox
Esc - cancels any background XMLHttpRequests in Firefox
That leaves Option + Space. I'm aware that may conflict with tools like Ubiquity, but that's something we don't expect our audience to be using.
Are there any conflicts I may have missed with Option+Space? Or do you have a better idea for a keyboard shortcut, and why?
A lot of Mac OS X apps use Option + Esc to do code completion or code hints.
Some kind of tab shortcut sounds like the best and most intuitive approach - users should be used to the 'type-tab-type-tab' workflow - maybe combine it with a modifier if it only wants to be optional.
As I recall, Visual Studio and TextMate both use tab to code-complete. In Visual Studio an intellisense menu pops up as you start typing and tab acts as the selection confirmation.
In TextMate, you start typing part of a command then hit tab to activate said command's associated "bundle". The associated bundle typically generates a code snippet and fills in any dynamic parts of the snippet as you type.
Come to think of it, most command lines work this way as well, auto-completing file names and paths when tab is pressed after typing a few characters.
EDIT: You say tabs are needed for field switching in a web interface, but you may want to try intercepting the keyboard event in the textfield, and check if they're started typing a macro. If they have, auto-complete and swallow the key by returning false; if not, simply let the command bubble through.
I discussed these ideas with our design team. One of them suggested using Control + Enter, which is what we decided to go with. This causes forms that only contain a single input field to automatically submit in Firefox, but we deal with that by preventing the default action caused by the event.
I re-assigned the Spotlight command to Command + Shift + Space. This is easily done via Prefrences.App