I'm excited about desktop Google Docs client. I found a project using Adobe AIR which imitates Mozilla Prism. That didn't impress me at all. Do you have any pointer to a FOSS project building desktop Google Docs client?
If there are none, if you were to build, how would you do?
“Exciting” things like clipboard/dnd integration, offline, upload integration would mostly come from quality html5 support + some userscripts if google docs doesn't make use of non-portable features yet. Pick a browser with good html5 support, write userscripts, bundle it.
Related
In Flutter's official web page, Flutter is described as below:
"Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase."
My question is
1. Is it just for cross-platform UIs?
2. If it is, then how can you integrate with data models and all hardware features?
Thanks in advance!
Flutter is not just a framework that you can build great UI with. It uses the programming language Dart and the code is compiled to native platform code. It's not just for UI development as Google uses Flutter to make some of its applications like Stadia. Other companies like the New York Times build their apps with Flutter and those apps have functionality and they're entirely built with the Flutter framework.
So back to your question. It's not just for building beautiful UI's. Even in the documentation, it says:
natively compiled applications
So you can use Flutter to make cross-platform, native applications, not just for UI. It supports popular things like Redux, BLoC pattern, and many more for the reactivity of your app.
I recommend you take a look here to see some of the apps fully built with just the Flutter framework.
Flutter is UI plus business logic which means frontend, hence Flutter is a frontend SDK. Many people say that Dart is used for backend, but that’s not true, Dart is purely used for frontend logic and Flutter is indeed, 100% frontend. But…native Android and native iOS development too are “just” frontend, purely.
Because, the server side logic of any app is written using a backend language/framework which is not a responsibility for a frontend person (Android, iOS, Flutter or any other developer). Backend technologies to be used always depends on the company’s preferences. And remember, writing your backend in either of these frontend languages is not good for long-term lifespan of your app, most companies are not stupid, that they don’t use Kotlin or Dart or Swift in the backend to save money, they know that, ultimately, doing that will cost them even more than hiring backend devs separately because it is very rare (almost impossible) to find expert people who can code backends in Dart/Kotlin/Swift.
While JS has many existing, widely adopted stacks for backend, so the above is not same for web devs, they’ll be paid more for being a full-stack person.
There don't seem to be any APIs / examples of how to integrate WebRTC in Xamarin. There is a third party API (IceLink) by a company named Frozen Mountain Software but one requires a paid license to use it.
Any clue as to how to do this ?
You will have to use WebRTC native libraries for Xamarin. If you are good with using precompiled libraries then you may find it over web. However I prefer to compile webrtc native for each target platform. Google has documented steps very well, but it usually take time.
Once you have libraries ready for your platform then you can use it with xamarin. Let me know if you face any issue.
I am trying to get my hands dirty of firefox OS apps. I tried to follow instructions on https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_SDK
to get the SDK. I downloaded Gecko 22.0 (Firefox 22.0) zip file for windows.
Could anyone please tell me how to build it on windows system. The details given on the website are not as clear as I expected(I had expected them to be like that on android's site). Or is there a binary available for the SDK?
No SDK needed, it is all HTML5. If people talk about SDKs in that context, its often frameworks or maybe tools that can export to HTML5. But generally, you can use all the languages that work in a browser and use them without any framework or SDK to make an app.
The developer docs on Marketplace have this great intro on app development and testing: https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/docs/quick_start
Happy Hacking!
The "SDK" you are looking for is probably the Firefox OS Simulator Addon for the Mozilla Firefox browser. Actually, all you need to test your applications for most hosted ones is a browser of some sort, but the Simulator (also called as R2D2B2G) lets you preview most of the phones' functionality, API-s and install packaged apps.
Besides installing and testing your applications you will also get a feel of Gaia - the user interface of Firefox OS, written, too, in HTML5.
Like many of the answers here, there's no real SDK, as Firefox OS apps are basically HTML5 web pages with a manifest.webapp The firefox OS Simulator mentioned by Flaki is great to test your app.
I recommend watching this short video from Robert Nyman, one of Mozilla's FFos evangelists on getting started with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyrldlSx_o
And this is a good tutorial on developing an app: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/06/building-a-todo-app-for-firefox-os-part-1/
I'm looking for a desktop publishing platform for Mac, Windows, and Linux that is closely tied to PhoneGap in terms of the concept. I know that there's Titanium for Desktop (TideSDK?) but as far as I've used it before, it requires the end-users to download a big 70mb-ish runtime file once. What I liked about PhoneGap is that it doesn't require any of that (it works out of the box). I'm looking for something similar, only, instead of being meant for the mobile development, it 's targeted at desktop application development.
Perhaps I failed to mention it but if you are not aware of what I'm specifically talking about, I'm talking about an environment of sort that will let me code via an HTML base and output a native for said platforms. Both TideSDK and PhoneGap does this.
I would highly recommend giving TideSDK another chance, I have developed large, data driven applications on it in the past, and deployed to OSX and Windows and have personally been very satisfied with it. Also, it is now an open source project managed and maintained by a very good team with some oversight and help from Appcelerator (the original creators).
Theyre are two benefits to TideSDk as I see it:
License - TideSDK is open source licensed under a liberal Apache 2.0 license. As opposed to QT which is under the restrictive GNU Lesser Public, and commercial license.
Power - TideSDK allows you to leverage native API's (like phonegap) but access them in your favorite programming language (well, choose between Ruby, PHP, and Python). Your only options with QT are C++.
As for what you said about the 70MB runtime, this is not true, I built the runtime in with my last project, and the binary I gave to my clients (OSX) was only 15.3MB.
Hope this helps you come to a decision.
There is a way to run a PhoneGap HTML5 App on the Desktop with the help of Adobe AIR like described here: http://www.tricedesigns.com/2012/02/17/repurposing-phonegap-apps-as-desktop-apps/
But I am also looking for a less bloaty approach. Maybe based on Xulrunner/Prism/WebRT thing (or Chrome).
Tidesdk is the easiest, xml file is almost identical to the phonegap, provides powerful api and the best part you can package your app with runtime. I think you should stick to tidesdk.
I was looking for the same and found this implementation for windows ony: https://github.com/davejohnson/phonegap-windows
I did not tried it though.
I would like to create a Windows desktop app using HTML5 features, specifically H.264 video,Web SQL Database,FileReader API. I don't want to use AIR (which currently does not support the video tag, instead uses Flash). Ideally I would like an exe file that just wraps the latest version of webkit in a basic window. It should be stand alone, not rely on the user having Chrome etc. installed. It could load an index.html file in the same directory as the exe. That is it.
I have been unable to find anything like this. I was going to build it myself using QTWebkit but the latest version (4.8.0) does not support the Video tag due to some kind of build issue. I assume the 4.8.1 version will fix this.
Does anyone out there know of something like this that is available now?
For anyone coming across this, Titanium for desktop is no longer supported by Appcelerator, but the project is still supported as an open source initiative. As of today (10/14/2012), it is called TideSDK. According to their Twitter account, they're behind in the 1.3 release due to some sponsored work that will end up in the code base.
Additional options not yet mentioned include AppJS (OSS, requires node.js) and Sencha Desktop Packager (quite pricey).
I think titanium is not totally gone. There is this stuff called tideSdk
I couldn't try it out yet also , so video support and the codec are open for your exploration. Here is how they say:
Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript
TideSDK is the new standard for creating beautiful and unique desktop
apps using your web development skills.
I recently thought about doing the same thing, you can still do it with air without using flash, but you could also use Chrome Packaged apps, mozilla prism (although inactive today) or Microsoft HTA (html application).
You can think of using a framework that does the browser embedding for you like Titanium. It's mostly used for creating apps that can be published to iphone, android, and windows devices. It will create a windows MSI install.
Another option is to use the CEF project ( Chromium Embedded Framework for C/C++). I havn't looked at it much, so I can't tell you how difficult/easy it is to work with. Their main site also has wrappers for Java, .NET, and other languages.