I have a question about ActiveX. From what I've read and found on the internet, ActiveX is diminishing today and is seen less and less use. My question is, why is that? And what technology is taking over ActiveX?
Thanks
ActiveX only runs in Internet Explorer thus it is not a good platform for applications that want to reach a wide variety of browsers. It is definately on the decline for public facing websites. I'd say it is still somewhat common for Corporate internal apps that need access to API's that normal web technologies simply can not reach.
Now a days, you can acheive much of the same behavior with Html, CSS and Javascript. Especially HTML5.
Also: There are So many browsers out there now. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, SkyFire, and all the various slimmed-down browsers that are now on mobile devices. You don't stand a chance if your users are using ANY of these browsers if you have an ActiveX Application
Much of what one could do with ActiveX can be done using some AJAX techniques, and what is commonly called HTML5 (you youngsters and your acronyms) where HTML5 = HTML, CSS, Javascript. Search for AJAX and HTML5 and you will come across millions of entries.
As Chris Kooken indicated, ActiveX is limited to IE and Windows platforms, and one has no hope of getting ActiveX to run on any of the current mobile platforms.
Even Microsoft has given up on ActiveX, they came up with Silverlight to replace it. And there are indications that Silverlight is being phased out too, in favor of HTML5.
Here's just one recent article demonstrating Microsoft's leanings: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/11/silverlight-html5-and-microsofts-opaque-development-strategy.ars
Related
I want to make a project like the Symptoms checker like WebMD did it
WebMD Symptom Checker
i want not logged in user to interact with it.
I dont want to make it in FLASH like webmd did it, i want to make it using JQuery and Ajax,
What is the Advantages and Disadvantages of doing a project like this using Jquery and Ajax , well, i will be implementing it using Zend framework
Does Ajax Requests on a Project like this and its on a public page affect on website security ? Does it affect on SEO ? What the disadvantage for using Ajax on this project
Well I don't know what you mean exactly by advantages and disadvantages but I think you mean that you want it implemented in HTML5 instead of Flash.
Flash strengths:
Flash is more ubiquitous (most of desktop users).
The Flash developer community is large and mature.
The developer tools are strong and well supported.
Designers are more comfortable in working in flash.
The 2D and 3D APIs are more mature and usable than Canvas.
Flash gives you better access to web cam and and audio recording.
Flash better supports streaming, secure and live
video.
Flash weaknesses:
Information embedded in Flash is often invisible to search engines.
Website reporting on Flash navigation is problematic and cumbersome.
Flash breaks web usability standards.
Lack of consistent cross platform support (not all devices have the same version installed).
Code embedding Flash objects doesn’t pass w3c validation.
Some users disable Flash to avoid flash based advertising.
Website updates continually require Flash skills.
Flash breaks Search Engine Site Previews.
Flash doesn’t work well with Mac OSX, and Apple’s mobile devices do
not support Flash content.
HTML5 strengths:
Better suited for mobile devices (lower battery consumption).
HTML5 uses DOM and HTML support, so plug-ins and 3rd party programs
are unnecessary for video and audio embedding.
Websites with HTML5 elements have greater consistency in terms of the
HTML used to code a page on one site compared to another.
More descriptive semantics
Richer Media Elements
HTML5 is the future.
HTML5 weaknesses
Only modern browsers support it.
The language itself is considered a work in progress
Rich media has to be compressed in multiple formats in order to be
compatible with most browsers.
You have to work with JavaScript
Of course you will find many libraries to aid you will using html5. There are great libraries out there other than JQuery such as Modernizer
The only problem I think that Zend framework might cause will working with HTML5 is that it still doesn't support the new HTML5 inputs.
UPDATE:
AJAX has no difference when it comes to security than the normal http request. Almost all security risks that can be expoited through normal http requests can be done using AJAX, so the ways to mitigate these vulnerabilities are the same.
As a general rule, search engines do not crawl content generated by JavaScript or Ajax. The most notable exception being Google's crawlable Ajax. But that only applies to Google and even then that's a bad idea.
To make your game more search engine friendly you will need to make content available via static links. Without these you essentially have a one page website which is very difficult to rank well. But it can if you obtain enough incoming links which is possible if your game is very good.
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.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Will IE9 support WebGL and/or WebSockets?
Most answers to the question "When will browser X support HTML5 feature Y?" are answered by When Can I Use. In addition to list past, current and future support each item also generally has links to relevant news.
WebSockets
WebGL
Update:
Microsoft has been actively participating in the IETF HyBi working group (WebSockets protocol) and also participating in W3C work on the WebSockets API. The IE 10 preview release has WebSocket support built-in so it looks very likely that we will soon see a official release version of IE with WebSockets.
WebGL in IE still looks pretty uncertain. Microsoft claims fundamental security issues with the design of WebGL, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that Microsoft has a vested interest in promoting their own DirectX framework rather than OpenGL (which is what WebGL is based on).
As of a few months ago, the IE9 team hadn't made a decision about supporting WebSockets, and they didn't seem to see the point to WebGL.
WebGL seems not to be include in IE's strategy because of DirectX.
Anyway google already worked on that with the ANGLE project.
http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/
The IE team added a WebSocket implementation at HTML5 Labs which is their testing ground for new implementations. Chances are high that WebSockets will make it in IE9
You can look at the current release notes for the platform demo - there is no mention of either WebSockets or WebGL.
There are many discussions of the security issues of WebGL. I first heard of it on one of Steve Gibson's podcasts. Since it gives much lower level access to both the operating system and the hardware any flaw can be exploited much more severely. A quick Google search found this article with descriptions and video of some of the flaws: http://www.contextis.com/research/blog/webgl2/
Microsoft seems quite reluctant to implement WebGL in IE, since OpenGL is a competitor to DirectX. So I think it's unlikely we'll see WebGL in IE in the near future.
I’ve started an Open Source project called JebGL that can serve as a fallback for IE users. It’s a Java applet that when finished will serve as a plugin replacement for a WebGL canvas. It’s still in the early stages of development, but you can check out the demos at http://jebgl.googlecode.com
Right now, the Microsoft IE team is struggling to get HTML 5 and SVG (2D graphics) into Internet Explorer 9. Other web browser makers have been shipping with those standards built in for years.
Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox all run fine on Windows. Takes one mouse click to launch a different browser. Takes a year or two to see what Microsoft might do.
IE progress has consistently been glacially slow this whole decade.
No, IE does not have WebGL support now and betas from other browser makers already run it. IE9 will not catch up with contemporary web standards like WebGL, just ones that have been out for several years or more.
IE9 is not a cross platform web browser either. It will only run on certain specific versions of Microsoft Windows. Just run one of the standard web browsers and you can see what WebGL can do. Their current betas are running some impressive WebGL demos now.
As a fallback until Microsoft adds WebGL support, the Google Chrome Frame beta currently supports WebGL.
RE: WebSockets: No. The target was websocket support in IE10. Tests show that it only has partial support.
I am developing a simple webpage in Windows Server 2003. I am testing the webpage with multiple versions of Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.
The problem is that only Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 are displaying my webpages correctly. This started occurring since I used the recent version of jQuery.
When I try to test using Internet Explorer 6, Ajax controls do not work properly. The same page works in Windows XP on Internet Explorer 6 on a different machine.
I need to fix the bug I am having in Internet Explorer.
Is there a bugfix so that I can test on Windows Server 2003?
Is there some other method to test Internet Explorer 6 effectively in Windows Server 2003?
Why would Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Server 2003 behave differently than Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP?
How can I make them act the same?
I've found when working with the Multiple IEs that they don't provide a perfect way of testing IE6. I'd recommend downloading Virtual PC 2007 and the IE6 image and seeing if your ajax controls work in that environment. You can download the IE6 virtual hard disk from
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&displaylang=en
The answer to your last two bullet points is that IE6 is a crufty (buggy, insecure) old piece of software that does not implement the relevant W3C and ECMA standards properly. IE7 is a bit better, and IE8 is better still, but the open source alternatives are superior in the area of standards compliance.
While there are a lot of people still using IE6, the proportion is falling steadily. For example, the latest available Net Applications statistics show that IE6 is down to less than 17% and Firefox 3.0 is over 20%.
So what should this mean to you? Well the aim of standards and standards compliance is that a web page that uses the standard in the right way should work, and look pretty much the same, on any standards compliant browser. If you try to support a blatantly non-compliant browser you are going to have to incorporate all sorts of workarounds (alternative versions of pages, clever CSS hacks, conditional Javascript, etc) to get your pages to work across the range of browsers. It is hard work.
So my advice is to not support IE6 and earlier unless you really have to. Instead, spend your time making sure that your web page works on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. My experience is that pages that work on one of the open source alternatives have a good chance of working on all of them.
I've just downloaded IE8, which replaced my IE7, but that's okay because IE8 has a 'compatibility view' which is meant to render pages like IE7 (not sure about the JavaScript).
I was wondering if there is a listing on the internet of all major differences a developer should know between the versions. I've searched Google a bit but haven't found a satisfactory listing.
So, what should I (or any other web developer) know about getting my site working optimally on IE8, and what are the major differences between the two?
I would start by looking here:
Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit
Differences between IE8 Compatibility View and IE7
IE8 Developer Resources
I don't think you'll find a comprehensive "gotcha" list of rendering quirks until more folks have it installed. There are a bunch of new features like Accelerators that you can develop to build new features into IE8. This looks like a good start.