Ask Slashdot: Chromeless Cross-Platform Browser?

blakieto writes "Mozilla has the Prism project, which turned into Chromeless, which seems to have died [Note: last update was May 31]. I'm seeking a no-interface-what-so-ever cross-platform browser for use as a 'user interface host' to a self-hosted web app. Slight background: I've a professional market web app, with a large portion of the customer base unable to access public Internet connections. So, I want to make a version of my product self-hosted, with the web server and web app and everything necessary to run the web app locally installed on a user's machine. I have everything except a chromeless browser. Oh, and my customers are local police & highway patrol type organizations, most likely running an aged Windows box (probably IE6, too)."

Comments

Use Prism?

[PCM2]

I'm not sure I understand. Prism still exists, and it sounds like what you want, so I don't understand why you say it "turned into Chromeless."

It's also very easy to embed Internet Explorer in things. A friend of mine once "wrote a Web browser" in Macromedia Director using about six lines of code.

Re:Use Prism?

[PCM2]

Words Cross-Platform hint at this not being an option, nevermind IE's blatant disregard of standards.

How about the words, "Oh, and my customers are local police & highway patrol type organizations, most likely running an aged Windows box (probably IE6, too)"? Claiming you want something cross-platform is all well and good when you're trying to sound like a good Slashdotter, but when the facts are that your customers are all on Windows, it seems pointless to worry too much about it.

Re:Use Prism?

[gomek-ramek]

Follow the links on the page you provided, and you'll see that Prism isn't supported past Firefox 3.6.*. Also, Mozilla themselves said that Prism is now Chromeless.

Why not create a native application?

[Anonymous Coward]

While web applications are often a bad idea, this takes it to a whole new level of bad. Your users get none of the benefits of a web app, but many of the drawbacks.

If you care even the slightest about your customers and their experience, why not just provide them with a real native application that has the same functionality, in addition to a sensible UI and architecture?

Use a mature, cross-platform toolkit like wxWidgets or Qt, and you'll be able to support all sorts of Windows systems, in addition to many other platforms.

Re:Why not create a native application?

[Mycroft_VIII]

No mod points or I'd just mod up. Why add the extra overhead of a server and a browser to your app. And on older machines.
    Can you say slow rube-goldberg machine (and just as fragile likely).
K.I.S.S.; keep it simple and don't add all that junk when you get nothing for it.

Mycroft

Re:Why not create a native application?

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

No mod points or I'd just mod up. Why add the extra overhead of a server and a browser to your app. And on older machines. Can you say slow rube-goldberg machine (and just as fragile likely). K.I.S.S.; keep it simple and don't add all that junk when you get nothing for it. Mycroft

Perhaps there are plans to turn the application into a network wide, integrated solution once the bugs are worked out and the security force has habituated. Think about it. He's programming for law enforcement-style organizations, and there's no way they're going to a) be able to shell out for an overhaul at once, and b) want to prove that the solution is workable on an individual level before linking it up. Or maybe there is no reliable connection, but network functionality will be built in.

In any case, you're not really answering his question, you're just telling him that his approach is wrong. If I had mod points, I'd mod you down.

Re:Why not create a native application?

[hey!]

So you don't have to have two different app development teams, one for your web projects and one for this project?

Because you want to make use of the javascript libraries you've developed for exactly this kind of app?

Because you have the whole app stack done and tested for web deployment and now you're selling a low end "single user" configuration?

Because you want to use the database platform you're used to and it doesn't happen to be embeddable like SqlLIte? And since you're running the database server anyway a web server's not so big a deail?

I could go on and on. I'm not saying this guy's approach make sense; I'm saying you can't pass judgment on it based on what he's told us.

Re:Why not create a native application?

[Lisias]

When all you have is a Hammer, every screw is a nail.

Re:Why not create a native application?

[DarkOx]

Because you want to charge your customer for some crapy hunk of klugeware you build out of code snip-its you had laying around from other projects, instead of building something appropriate for their needs.

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Use firefox with --chrome="path_to_your_homepage"

Re:Easy

[aztracker1]

Portable firefox in the application install with a link to that runtime would be usefult as well.. since this way you have a single runtime to test against... Though I don't see how prism is not a fit anyhow... since the development of this needs to support a browser from 3 months ago, at least you have a fixed point to work against for your desktop install.

Adobe Air 1.5+

[Palantar]

Super easy to create an app that's nothing but a webkit instance. Unbelievably easy.

I have the same need

[gr7]

We are happily using prism for our customer's (also in law enforcement) whose IT department refuses to let them install "firefox". Right now prism is great but it would be nice to eventually get those ff ver 4 and ver 5 faster javascript interpreters (engines?).

I'm not sure if using --chrome would help us because I suspect I would have to use the firefox setup.msi file which would give away our secret as usually the IT department is the group going around installing our software on our user's machines. Unless creating my own ff installer is simple (I'm experienced creating an msi file but the prism one is so simple because all it does is copy files - no registering of dlls or registry changes).

Do you remember back before 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

People like yourself, who were apparently born after 2000, aren't aware than for decades we used networked native applications quite successfully. In fact, most users of those apps who are now stuck using web apps will say that they'd love to go back and use real applications again. Their productivity would rise immediately.

Sure, those systems didn't consist of "web browsers", "web servers", "HTML5", "JavaScript" and all of the other buzzwords that the ignorant today consider to be the only way to create networked applications. But these native apps did run on many different systems, and they could communicate with server software running locally or remotely. It was quite trivial to implement auto-update functionality, so that users always had the latest version. It was more than possible to ensure that the communications were done securely. Basically, anything a web app can do today could be (and was!) done using a native app in 1975, if not earlier.

You guys don't even need to look any further than your dear web browsers like Chrome and Firefox to see how all of the supposed benefits of web apps are just as easily realized when using native apps. Then there are the many benefits that only native apps offer, like much better data security and significantly better performance.

Re:Stop fighting Microsoft

[hedwards]

I'm not sure about this instance, but MS frequently requires that long to get the implementation right. Sometimes even longer, it's been like 16 years now and they have yet to get profiles right. It's absolutely inexcusable that after all this time I can't just copy or rename a profile more or less whenever I want without having to use special tools to do it.

Or how about the registry. Why they haven't given up on what was clearly a bad idea a long time ago is beyond me.

home noexec

[tepples]

UNIX [...] allowed multiple users to use the same physical computer, and as part of this it gave each user their very own isolated "home directory".

It also allows the administrator to mount /home noexec.

Doesn't make sense.

[yarnosh]

First, why not just install the app and put a URL link on the desktop pointing to http://localhost:7777/? Second, are you really sure it makes sense to have a self hosted web app? I, for one, absolutely despise when companies ship some tool that installs a web server on my machine and makes me use it through a web browser. IIRC, HP did this kind of garbage for managing their printers. Write a god damn native app if it is just going to install on my local machine!

I realize that you probably want to save some money and not write two pieces of software that do the same thing, but how hard can it possibly be to make a UI in .NET that is at least as good as your web interface? Share code if you have to. If you've written the software correctly, you should be able to share the model level functionality between the two apps. Or install the web app on the local machine but create an API that the native app can hit.

It really sounds like you are approaching this problem from the completely wrong angle.

Opera Kiosk Mode

[creativeHavoc]

Don't forget, when looking for an innovative browser feature that you need implemented, look no further than Opera, because they already did it.

http://www.opera.com/support/mastering/kiosk/ Opera kiosk mode has plenty of features that would work great for you.

Chromeless is not dead

[kripkenstein]

I'm not sure I understand. Prism still exists, and it sounds like what you want, so I don't understand why you say it "turned into Chromeless."

I think he meant this announcement, that focus is shifting from Prism to Chromeless.

But, OP is wrong about "[Chromeless] seems to have died [Note: last update was May 31]" - yes, the last blogpost was May 31, but the last source code commit on github was less than a month ago. That doesn't sound 'dead' to me.

So Chromeless sounds like the way to go here, for what OP is looking for.

Re:HTML/CSS rendering or JS engine?

[fruitbane]

I am replying to myself because it seems that Apple's speedy JS is indeed getting fed back to WebKit and Google's fast JS code is also open source. Hooray for a little research!

Chrome has --app switch

[ciantic]

One trick is to use Google Chrome like this:

chrome --app="http://mail.google.com"

It's of course not fully featured with tray icon stuff etc. but it is supported feature of Chrome.