I am running Firefox 4 beta for testing, and unfortunately Google hasn't updated their Gears extension for Firefox 4. At this point, it even seems that Google might not update Gears for Firefox 4. Do you guys know of any trick to get Gears to run on Firefox 4?
(For reference, here is where you can download the OS X XPI for Gears.)
Google have explicitly deprecated Gears; they no longer support it (as of about a year ago!).
They have switched to focus on HTML5 and other related new browser features. In effect they're saying that all the functionality provided by Gears can be done using HTML5.
Here's a link to an article about them dropping it (but there's plenty of others if you google for it):
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/11/google-gears.html
The down-side is that not all browsers do support all the HTML5 features that are needed to replicate the Gears functionality, so by deprecating it they've cut off support for some browsers. Chrome is fine, of course! But the other browsers are catching up - certainly Firefox 4 should be fine.
A lot of the functionality provided by google-gears is becoming part of html5 - firefox has implemented local storage since 3.5.
Modernizr provides api detection - but not abstraction - I imagine there may be some out there on the internet (Google Gears / HTML5 has only recently appeared on my radar). So far I've not found any way for an html5 app to create a desktop shortcut though.
Update:
See also:
http://www.phonegap.com/
https://github.com/zefhemel/persistencejs
http://code.google.com/p/webstorageportabilitylayer/
Related
I am new to CSS, Flexbox and Frontend development. I wanted to build a site with Flexbox, CSS3 and HTML5. (No Frameworks)
Safari 5.1 for Windows does not work with Flexbox .
I played with Chris Coyier's "Old and New Browser Comparability" solution and it worked but seems limited.
My questions are:
Do I have to build a second stylesheet specifically for Safari?
How do I integrate styling without messing up the "Coyier" Structure CSS in my Safari stylesheet?
How can I get the Safari browser to ignore the stylesheet created for other browsers?
Can you suggest reading, site examples or what you did to address this problem?
Thank you so much.
Safari for Windows was available from 2007 to 2012 before it was discontinued. As it hasn't been updated in five years, it doesn't support many modern web standards - and as such, virtually nobody is using it. You shouldn't need to test against it for compatibility.
More information:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/25/apple_kills_windows_pc_support_in_safari_60
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)
Since last few updates of Firefox our beloved Firebug is integrated into the Firefox Developer Tools and a lot of people including me don't like what happened to Firebug.
The built-in developer tools have a very ugly menu system and messed up usability.
So, what are the alternatives to the Firefox Developer Tools? Is there a tool with the same usability as Firebug?
Alternatives are:
Turn off multi-process Firefox. (Though that's only a temporary solution and doesn't bring back all functionality of Firebug. E.g. the Script panel is broken in current versions of Firefox.)
Install an old version of Firefox where Firebug still works and disable updates. (Also only a temporary solution, because you'll miss (security) bug fixes and new features.)
Wait until the gaps between Firebug and the Firefox DevTools are fixed. (Or even help them fixing them.)
Switch to another browser and use its developer tools.
Rework Firebug to make it compatible with multi-process Firefox (which is the main reason for the integration into the DevTools). Update: Starting with Firefox 57 only WebExtensions will be supported, meaning extensions work cross-browser and are more secure, but they also have limited APIs. So, a reworked Firebug would not have all the features the original Firebug had.
Following Sebastian's advice I've downloaded old Firefox portable v47 from here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Ed./Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Edition%2047.0.1/
and I'm using it with Firebug only for development. According to Firebug's website 47 is the last compatible version of Firefox:
https://getfirebug.com/downloads
To avoid compromising on security, for normal browsing I use updated version of Chrome.
Downgrading the version is not advisable, So instead of that go to the browser console and type your respective xpath in the mentioned syntax $x('path') to validate your XPath.
Or can find other similar plugin. So far I find the Plugin 'Xpather' in http://xpath.alephzarro.com/ link.
But I still would like to reactivate Firebug to rework by setting the preferences browser.tabs.remote.autostart,
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.1 and
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2
to false via about:config.
I'm developing a web app and want to make sure that it runs as intended on all major browsers. I've downloaded Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE to test the app, but I want to make sure it works fine on previous versions of these browsers too.
I know I can download previous versions of Opera from here, and in IE I can select 'Browser Mode' from Developer Tools section.
Is there any way I can test my app on previous version of Chrome, FF and Safari?
I've never really had a problem with something not working in an older version of these browsers. The only compatibility checks I do are with older versions of IE. The reason is that a new version of IE changes a lot but the others come out with new versions so frequently and have automatic updating (you don't even notice it in Chrome) that not only is there (probably) not a significant change to the rendering engine from one version to the next, (pretty much) everyone using it is on the latest version anyway.
That being said, there are some websites that show you screenshots of how a page looks in various browsers.
Browser Shots comes to mind.
http://www.brokenkeyboards.com/btfm/
http://meineipadresse.de/netrenderer/
http://browsershots.org/
I am getting started with Firefox addon development and have got myself acquainted with the Add-on Builder. Is this wizard all I need to get deep into Firefox addon development (if so, where would I create the XUL files and how would I create a custom toolbar?). Or is it that one cannot implement all features using this Add-on Builder? Also are there any good tutorials which explain how to get started with Firefox addon development using the Add-on Builder (because it seems so much easier).
Tutorials which I already have referred to:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions
http://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2009/
But these are not specific to using the Add-on Builder. I would please like someone to point me to where I can find help to develop using the Add-on Builder.
Also if I am developing the addon locally using the SDK is there any good editor which I can use which will show me the list of commands that I can execute (like Eclipse in Java).
The red line is where i want my icon to appear. Is it possible to do it using the addon builder.
There are currently two kinds of Firefox extensions:
Classic extensions use a XUL-based user interface. They can do almost anything but it might take a bit until you see some results with your extension. For documentation on classic add-ons see How do I write a Firefox Addon?
Extensions based on Add-on SDK use HTML for user interface. The SDK provides a simple but limited API. In particular, it explicitly won't let you create toolbars, only single toolbar icons (which makes sense, extensions shouldn't be wasting so much screen space). It won't let you determine the icon placement either - as of Firefox 4 all extension icons are supposed to appear in the add-on bar (the user can customize the toolbars and change the placement however). You can get low-level platform access with chrome authority however. The official Add-on SDK documentation is pretty much all you've got here I think.Edit: Ok, the information on limitations of the Add-on SDK is somewhat outdated. As of Firefox 30, adding toolbars is possible. Also, as of Firefox 29 the icons are placed in the main toolbar by default - the add-on bar is no more. So the only real limitation remaining is the icon placement.
The Add-on Builder is merely a web interface to the SDK - it allows you to edit the extensions conveniently but otherwise it uses Add-on SDK to generate the extensions.
To put an icon directly in the toolbar currently, your best bet is to use Erik Vold's toolbar module ( available in Builder as a package ). here is an example that does that:
https://builder.addons.mozilla.org/addon/1044724/latest/
I read that early builds of Chrome supported ActiveX, but was later restricted to certain MIME types (for support for say Windows Media Player). I then read Google was going to enable ActiveX strictly for the Korean market. How do I (re)enable this in Chrome?
Our web based product relies on ActiveX controls from 3rd parties to play custom video. This limits us to IE. We'd love to support Chrome also, but find it impossible w/o ActiveX support.
There is a proprietary plugin called "Neptune" which says that it will allow you to use IE Tab functionality in Chrome on Windows.
Meadroid do this because they have ActiveX controls which they have written and they want them to be able to work in any browser, and they explicitly mention Chrome in the list of supported browsers for enabling ActiveX with this.
There is also a modified version of Chrome, called ChromePlus, which includes IETab, among other extra features.
I've not used either of these personally, but they look like they'll do what you want. I'd be interested to hear if they work out for you, as I know of other people who want to be able to use IEtab in Chrome :)
anyone who says activex is less secure then NPAPI is crazy. They both allow the exact same access. Yes I've written both. The only reason people think activeX is insecure is because 10+ years ago IE had default settings that allowed a remote site to auto download the plugin.
maybe this new Chrome extension helps:
ActiveX for Chrome
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lgllffgicojgllpmdbemgglaponefajn/
This could be pretty ugly, but doesn't Chrome use the NPAPI for plugins like Safari? In that case, you could write a wrapper plugin with the NPAPI that made the appropriate ActiveX creation and calls to run the plugin. If you do a lot of scripting against those plugins, you might have to be a bit of work to proxy those calls through to the wrapped ActiveX control.
I'm not an expert but it sounds to me that this is something you could only do if you built the browser yourself - ie, not something done in a web page. I'm not sure that the sources for Chrome are publicly available (I think they are though), but the sources are what you'd probably need to change for this.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_Google_Chrome_support_ActiveX
Google Chrome comes with an ActiveX
shim, as part of its default plugin
array. So Google Chrome features at
least partial support for ActiveX
controls (as do many non-Internet
Explorer browsers). I can't find
information as to whether or not this
includes support for ActiveX security
certificates or the like, nor if/where
such plugins can be controlled, within
the browser.
..... Note that to enable the plug-in
you must run Chrome with the following
switch " --allow-all-activex" So in
shortcut that is used to start up
Chrome, add this after "Chrome.exe"
I downloaded this "IE Tab Multi" from Chrome. It works good! http://iblogbox.com/chrome/ietab/alert.php