Is there some reasonably cross platform way to create a thumbnail image given a URL? I know there are thumbnail web services that will do this, but I want a piece of software or library that will do this locally. I guess in Linux I could always spawn a browser window using a headless X server, but what about Windows or OS X?
You can use Firefox or XULRunner with some fairly simple XUL to create thumbnails as PNG dataURLs (that you could then write to file if needed). Robert O'Callahan has some excellent information on it here:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2005/05/rendering_web_p.html
I know you said you want the service to be local, but... if you have to be connected to the Internet to take the screenshot, you should equally have access to a web service. It seems like a better move to do this than to open yourself up to cross-platform issues of taking screenshots locally.
There are a number of commercial packages that will do what you want. I'm not sure from reading your question if free is a requirement. But here are some applications I've found that are reasonably priced and which do exactly what you want. I have not used them myself, but they have free trial downloads so you can evaluate before you purchase.
HTML to Image from Guanming Software - Runs on Linux and Windows
HTML2Image from SysImage - Runs on Windows
HTML2Image from Tooto - Runs on Windows
Convert HTML to Image from FrameworkTeam - Windows command line tool
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I have a project to do (an app relied to a DB, used to display and modify data, basically CRUD). The application will run on windows, but I don't have any windows computer (and don't want to buy one) so I will develop on OS X.
So, my question is which language should I use ? I know a bit (but really a bit) in Ruby and Java. I'm a good C# developer, but without windows and VS, it won't be really useful.
My priorities are : a simple GUI toolkit, and a simple packaging/distribution system, because my client isn't good in IT. If I could have fun during development it would be a plus (and I say this because I think Ruby is funnier) but it's not a priority.
So, any programming language/UI toolkit simple to deploy and to use on OS X who could run on Windows ?
Thank you !
IT kind of depends on your app really. you could make it a web app if you want nice GUI and with easy html css and there is alot precoded for you. hosting on some web service with basic mysql or any other database shouldnt be an issue costs wise and your client can just open the browser and it runs, if he has internet connection available where he needs the app to work. anyway it runs everywhere and since yo know java... thats what i would.
depends on your app really.
Most people that need to do this just get a VM running Windows, and run Visual Studio from there.
I have an application for Windows Phone 7 that I need to bundle up and send to several doctors for a content review. Ideas on how this might be done? I can't expect the docs to install the full SDK, but if I could bundle the emulator with it that might work, or if there's an easy way to convert the app to a Windows EXE that would as well. All suggestions welcomed!
While the theory is that since it's SIlverlight it should just run on the desktop. Years of Compact Framework development have taught me that this theory is almost never correct and getting it to work is often a real chore.
Microsoft has not yet delivered a stand-along WinPhone emulator (no idea if they will, but they did for WinMo) so for now that option is off the table. Getting your end user to install the stand-alone emulator is a fair bit of work anyway.
To be honest, my experience has been that just doing a Camtasia capture of the developer screen while you step through the app is one of the easiest ways to get ideas across to these types of groups. No, the end result isn't interactive, so they can't clock on buttons themselves, but if you walk through the feature they want to see, you can usually answer 95% of the questions this way.
When you need to address that other 5%, my experience has been that it's easiest to just send them a physical device with the app installed.
If they are (or have ready access to someone who is) fairly tech-savvy, shipping a Virtual PC image of a PC with the emulator installed and the app installed on it sometimes works.
Dot NET code using MS libraries is partially upwards compatible and most runtime classes present on a mobile device are also available on desktop Windows (see MSDN docs for details). So create a copy of your source code, ask visual studio to create a desktop .exe from it, it'll tell you it can't for several reasons, and you will need to recode some sections of it, resize the frame window etc. to make it work.
If one is careful about what methods one uses, I have managed to actually use the exact same .EXE file on the desktop without problems!
You simply cannot present the application without the SDK, since Windows Phone 7 applications rely on a completely different subset of .NET Framework and require an emulator to run XAP packages. Although you might say that it's the same Silverlight, don't forget about Microsoft.Phone and derivatives - you need the SDK in order for those libraries to be properly handled.
Also, you cannot convert a WP7 application to a Windows executable due to difference in platform architectures.
What you could do is simply allow the doctors to test your application through TeamViewer or similar products.
i think a "killer app" for winphone7+silverlight would be a desktop browser based emulator. want to try the app? just have the store run the emulator in the browser. (yeah, lots of technical hurdles, limited multitouch etc, but it would be pretty slick!)
In developing a number of WP7 apps, I have a need to show clients how the app will be when deployed. The clients are a) not in the same location as I am, b) not technical at all, and c) may not even be using a PC. The purpose is to demo, get feedback and make any needed changes.
I'm not finding any realistic options to just simply show them what it would look, feel and run on a Windows Phone 7 (using the ApplicationBar, etc.). I found this link - http://www.redmondpie.com/standalone-windows-phone-7-series-emulator-9140536/ - but it's rather hacky for me to ask someone to do to set up an emulator on their machine without also installing VS Express, etc.
Does anyone know of any links to an official emulator that can be run on a PC, has a simple install and can load WP7 apps?
Have you considered using a product such as Citrix GoTo. Clients do not need to be particularly technical to join such a meeting, you can then take them through a demo. This will cost you though.
A free alternative would be to set aside a PC running the emulator with your software loaded. Create a VPN for you clients to connect to and let them use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to the PC. They can then play around with it remotely.
Have you considered using SketchFlow? Although by default the UI is "sketchy" (sorry), you can apply styles to the controls you drop on your pages, including the very same styles that are used by Windows Phone controls.
If you use a Silverlight SketchFlow project, you can deploy the content to a web server and provide a link that can be consumed on any machine that will render Silverlight content...they can go through the navigation, provide feedback, etc.
Christian Schormann has a writeup on what is required to use it in the pre-release tools... http://electricbeach.org/?p=573
You should take a look at this: http://justinangel.net/WindowsPhone7EmulatorAutomation. I believe it will answer your question exactly.
How can I use the browser as a UI for a desktop app? The ways I have come up with so far are...
Use all HTML/Javascript. Problem: Can't access filesystem or just about anything else.
Run a local webserver while the application is in use. Problem: How do I kill it when the user is done? My users are not technical enough to Ctrl+C.
Embed a browser component in a regular GUI. Problem: Embedded browser components tend to be glitchy at best. The support for Javascript/CSS is never as good as it is in a real browser.
...?
The ideal solution would work with any technology. I know there are options like writing Firefox extensions, but I want to have complete freedom in the backend technology and browser independence.
Please note that if you choose to run a local webserver, you're creating a security risk.
Any webpage running on the same machine that knows about your app can send requests to your server using Javascript, and you have no simple and reliable way of knowing what the request came from. (Don't trust the referer header)
Google Desktop, which uses a similar approach, has had several real-world vulnerabilities that allow any webpage to read any file on disk.
There are several ways to protect against this; I would recommend requiring each request to have a auth key which is randomly generated per-machine (and expires at some point), which you could put in the source for the actual pages. XHR protection would prevent malicious websites from reading the auth key, rendering them powerless.
If you are looking for a python Web Server with a Kill link, you could always check CherryPy.
import webbrowser
import cherrypy
import threading
class MyApp:
""" Sample request handler class. """
#cherrypy.expose
def index(self):
return """<html><head><title>An example application</title></head>
<body>
<h1>This is my sample application</h1>
Put the content here...
<hr>
Quit
</body></html>"""
#cherrypy.expose
def exit(self):
raise SystemExit(0)
class MyBGThread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.start()
def run(self):
cherrypy.tree.mount(MyApp())
cherrypy.quickstart()
myThread = MyBGThread()
webbrowser.open("http://127.0.0.1:8080")
This code is based on the sample from the SingleClickAndRun on the cherrypy website:
http://tools.cherrypy.org/wiki/SingleClickAndRun
Note than in a normal WebApp you would probably use a templating engine and load templates from methods like main.
Something that would be nice would be to embbed a browser control in a gui window and close the server when the app exits.
For the security, you could possibly add an authentication scheme. There are a few that are supported by cherrypy, but you possibly could implement your own too, using tool modules.
I am looking to do the exact same thing (desktop app that uses an up to date HTML5 / CSS3 browser as the desktop app's GUI), only with Ruby (various reasons why I decided to work with Ruby). Its amazing the number of cross platform libraries people have come up with. But yet, few to no one, has done any work on trying to get a web browser to be a desktop app UI. Cross platform issue... well I won't say solved, but I will say several steps in the right direction taken.
To me this would be perfect with the new HTML5 / CSS3 standards coming out. I know it can be done with a web server running locally.
Another way might be like how the guys from “280 North” are doing what they do. They developed Objective-J (an extension of regular JavaScript that mimics how Objective-C extends regular C) and Cappuccino (the Objective-J equivalent of Objective-C’s Cocoa frame work on the MAC). They also developed “Atlas” which is 280 North’s version of Apple’s “Interface Builder” from Xcode, for their Objective-J and Cappuccino frameworks to build Internet Applications. Atlas is actually a Cappuccino web app running on your desktop as a desktop app. In this case they use the Narwhal… a cross platform, general purpose, JavaScript platform for developing JS apps outside of the browser (basically a specialized web server).
If any one can come up with an idea to make “Browser, direct connect to Desktop App” work without the need of a web server co-existing and still get to manipulate the local FS, I to would be very interested… Hmmm... Now that I think about it, I wonder if the new Google Chrome project “Native Client” can be used to do that. NaCL is much like Active X except you are not limited to a windows platform (but will be limited to the Google Chrome browser, at least for now). Only there is added security via Sandboxing, but you can manipulate the local FS… The more I think about it, the more I am beginning to suspect that it can be done.
Any thoughts?
In Windows, you could embed the IE ActiveX control, which uses the same rendering engine as IE. (That's a plus and a minus) You can set the ScriptObject property in your host code and access it in Javascript as window.external to do things that Javascript cannot do.
If you run a local webserver, you could have an exit link in the app that kills the websever.
You did not mention the OS you will need to target. But you might be able to create a program statared web server, then launced the default browser. Wait until the browser is terminated by the user and then shut down the web server.
So for example on windows you can use CreateProcess() to spawn the process
then MsgWaitForMultipleObjects() to wait until it is finished executing.
HTML Applications (HTA, for short) have been around for a while. You can read all about them here. They are basically HTML and Javascript with some extra options to create a window and with access to the local file system. They seem to be exactly what you want. It is Microsoft technology, so this will only work with IE on Windows systems. I've successfully used this as a front-end for a CD-ROM which was used to distribute software to first year students
Another option would be to use Adobe Air. I'm not all that familiar with the technology, but it seems to provide a framework to deploy web pages as desktop applications. I can't post a second link as a guest, but just google it and you'll find it soon enough.
Today, in 2023, you can simply use any installed web browser as GUI using the WebUI library.
What is the best solution to programmatically take a snapshot of a webpage?
The situation is this: I would like to crawl a bunch of webpages and take thumbnail snapshots of them periodically, say once every few months, without having to manually go to each one. I would also like to be able to take jpg/png snapshots of websites that might be completely Flash/Flex, so I'd have to wait until it loaded to take the snapshot somehow.
It would be nice if there was no limit to the number of thumbnails I could generate (within reason, say 1000 per day).
Any ideas how to do this in Ruby? Seems pretty tough.
Browsers to do this in: Safari or Firefox, preferably Safari.
Thanks so much.
This really depends on your operating system. What you need is a way to hook into a web browser and save that to an image.
If you are on a Mac - I would imagine your best bet would be to use MacRuby (or RubyCocoa - although I believe this is going to be deprecated in the near future) and then to use the WebKit framework to load the page and render it as an image.
This is definitely possible, for inspiration you may wish to look at the Paparazzi! and webkit2png projects.
Another option, which isn't dependent on the OS, might be to use the BrowserShots API.
There is no built in library in Ruby for rendering a web page.
Using Selenium & Ruby is one possibility. You can run Firefox as a headless browser (ie on a server).
Here is the source code for browser shots. http://sourceforge.net/projects/browsershots/files/
If you are using Linux you could use http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/ and script it via Ruby.
Some paid services to try and automate
http://webthumb.bluga.net/home
http://www.thumbalizr.com
as viewed by.... ie? firefox? opera? one of the myriad webkit engines?
if only it were possible to automate http://browsershots.org :)
Use selenium-rc, it comes with snapshot capabilities.
With jruby you can use SWT's browser library.