I've seen download manager programs including IDM taking control of downloads in browsers without having extensions in them and they are calling it (Advanced Browser Integration).
I was wondering if anyone can suggest an approach for a similar situation?
IDM only works on Windows and does his Advanced Browser Integration tricks using Windows Filtering Platform which is a windows specific service.
If you want to do something similar on Windows, you should study that platform.
On unix systems, as far as I know, there isn't anything like the Windows Filtering Platform. Packet filtering and other firewall like functionality happens in the kernel and there are multiple implementations of that: which is running (if any) depends on how the user decided to configure the system (even if ipf is almost guaranteed to be the used one on BSD and BSD derived systems).
On Mac Os X specifically you probably want to check Network Kernel Extensions. I'm not sure they are sufficient to do what you want to do, but I suspect they are.
Related
I'm in the process of porting an application to ChromeOS with the requirement that it should look and feel as native as possible. This means in particular that it should allow things such as multi-monitor support and USB support.
One possibility would be to implement it as a web application (since we have already a web client), but in this case I would need to add support for native features (again, multi-monitor support and USB device access), so I wonder what needs to be done in this case. My wild guess as a ChromeOS developer newbie is that I would need to extend the code with ChromeOS JavaScript features, and I don't know if this is possible.
Another possible approach would be to write an Android application, since I see that ChromeOS added support for Android applications (in this case I would have to write the code from scratch).
Finally, another option would be to write native code, which could be possible for example relying on a Crouton development environment, and reuse the code of a native C application.
What approach would you recommend to build a ChromeOS application starting from a web application or from a native one?
What approach would guarantee access to native features (multi-monitor support and USB)?
I discovered two APIs which should help with multi-monitor support:
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/windows
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/system_display
The system.display API allows one to discover and monitor the current monitor layout, while the windows API allows one to create several windows in the same application. By combining these ones I should be able to create a window for each monitor in case I go with the chrome implementation route.
Given that I already have a native implementation for Linux, Crostini (as opposed to Crouton) is also very appealing since it provides a deeper level of integration with virtually no changes to the code and no need to maintain two different versions of the web client, with the only downside that it requires the user to create a Linux environment and manually install the application, also it is not supported on all chromebook devices and on many it will be never supported.
I still need to check what is the performance overhead. Also the level of integration with USB I/O might be higher than the one achievable by using the chrome API.
All,
I'm attempting to estimate the effort to port an app developed on Windows (.NET) to Linux (Mono). I came across the MoMA tool, which attempts to look through my .exe and find potential areas of incompatibility. Most of my issues appear to be centered around get/set of network settings, getting network info, etc. (Object ManagementBaseObject.get_Item and set_Item. etc).
In almost all of the cases, the Mono functionality is listed as "ToDo". For estimation purposes, is it safe to assume most/all of these have some kind of workaround? I would imagine this type of basic networking support must be included in the latest version of Mono. Or should I assume none of this is currently available and I would be stuck waiting for it to be implemented (or be forced to implement it myself)?
Thanks,
Dan
First,see Mono Compatible Networking/Socket Library. Also,take a look on Cross-Platform Network Applications with Mono. You can start with C# Network Library.
I heard that minecraft server is very leaky, can consume a lot of resources very quickly. People say to use a virtual machine, all well and good. I'm making an application to automate server setup, and I'd like my whole application (including minecraft) to run in an ultra basic auto setup vm (or something similar). I've heard of mineos, but I'm not sure if that can be set up very quickly. The vm will be so basic it won't even have a ui. I'm using a Mac, not planning to distribute the server WITH the application but have it download from the minecraft server, not modified.
I want it to be like a one-click-done solution for the end user, they don't have to worry about minecraft server gobbling up resources because it's be in a controllable virtual machine.
Distrubuting minecraft server (Notch's property) could be an issue, but if anyone knows about that if be happy to hear.
If you intend for a server to be fully configured and only for your user to only have to download and 'open' it, what you're seeking is known as an 'appliance'. Virtualbox supports the open-standard of such appliances, allowing a single file to be distributed and it contains all the virtualized hardware info as well as the OS/filesystem. A number of other formats exist, such as Turnkey.
In all likelihood, I would find MineOS CRUX to be perfectly suited for this sort of one-click-done, since the OS was designed for pretty much exactly what you're trying to do...only without the configure-the-hardware-for-the-user (it uses an ISO and an installer, the process you would automate for the end-user).
That said, this distribution has never at any point packaged Minecraft files, as clearly stated: "this Linux distro does not contain ANY Minecraft files. The scripts are, however, designed to download/update files directly from the source: http://minecraft.net"
Hope this answers all the concerns, despite being an old thread.
I need to provide our web developers an easy and quick way to test their code on multiple browsers. Here's my current plan:
Get a Mac
Install Windows XP and Linux over VMWare
Install all possible major browsers on these OSes, including on the Mac and the god-forsaken IE6.
This will allow developers to use the system to test their applications.
But is it possible to give them some sort of desktop sharing tool, so they can test remotely... keeping in mind that the their systems can be windows, linux(linus?) or macs.
Or am I doing it all wrong?
There are a few viable options I have used:
Get hardware. If you develop on Macs and have an old Windows box laying around, you might as well use it. You then need to figure out how you are going to connect to it. I have used:
(a) remote control tool (like VNC) to
a shared box. At one company we had a
IE6 testing box we all VNCed into
(b) Synergy on my desktop (which
allows sharing keyboard and mouse)
(c) Walking
VMs. Some developers like this because they have everything on one box, and can take it with them. You'll probably need multiple VMs for different versions of Windows. I've done this with both Parallels and VMWare.
External service. #chotchki mentioned one, but there are many others.
My current favorite is 1b, but they are all workable.
To answer your question: VMs are a reasonable solution.
There a web service that already does this Browser Shots. You can also install the software on your own systems if you want to host your own.
I seem to end up evaluating a lot of software. This requires me to constantly install all kinds of things on my system. It creates a huge clutter and I spend a lot of time during the install process, and if I don't like it, then removing everything I've done. Much of my evaluation tends away from the features of the software being evaluated and toward how difficult it is to install. I'm sure I miss good software which may have actually been a better choice, because of this startup cost.
With the advent of VM software like VMWare Player and VirtualBox, it would be much easier to sell someone like me your software, if you just provided an image that I could load into the VM and run. I'd be looking at the features almost immediately rather than fighting with which revision of whatever. The VM would take care of all of this for me.
Am I missing something, or should vendors and OSS start distributing VMs for their wares?
Most of my evaluations are for server side software installed on Linux, so OS licensing is not the issue.
VMs require that the operating system have a valid license key. For free operating systems this wouldn't be an issue, but if you're developing for something like Windows machines, each time they send out a demo version of their software, they're sending out a license key that they would have to pay for.
This would be incredibly expensive for most companies.
The only downside I would say IMHO is the size of the images, if say you have a 20 MB application, do you really want to download/transfer an entire OS just for that application.
I would say a better approach would be to have a ready to go VM and then you simply take a snapshot (on Virtual Box, I assume similar feature exist in other players)
Then simply install the applciation inside your sandbox environment, and then just Zap it when done (i.e. return to your Snapshot)
Darknight
This can be done for softwre that runs on open source platforms, and VMware have a library of images which do just this (though the images that are used for evaluating commercial software is generally for infrastructure-type things that have very, very complex installation requirements):
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/
However, if the software is for the Windows platform, you don't really have the opportunity to do this, as Microsoft's Windows licensing would prevent it. Unless, you're Microsoft, of course, in which case you can in fact do this - and MS has done this to permit easier evaluation of such software as Visual Studio, SQL, and many others:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb738372.aspx?ppud=4
Novell has an appliance builder called Suse Studio that lets you pick the software you want, it builds out a VM with the software (and dependencies, etc) for you. You can then try out the VM, download it, etc.
Whether the software you're looking for is available or not is a different matter.
Disclaimer: I work for Novell (though not with the Suse team)
But yes, if you can deal with the OS licensing issues, or possibly host trial environments yourself, this is a very effective way for a vendor to demo their app. The problem is that all vendors don't always have the infrastructure (or lack the awareness) to do so.
Microsoft provides fully-provisioned VM's for time-limited trials of their software. So if you want to trial select Microsoft products in that manner, you can do that today.
There is no sign, though, that Microsoft will make this available to third party Windows software vendors.
In the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) world, you can get fully-provisioned virtual servers that include Windows and your software of interest on a pay-as-you-go basis, based on both Linux and Windows. For example, see Amazon Web Services
For windows, you may be better off developing a portable application that runs from a usb key. That is how Embarcadero distribute All Access. I received a 4 gb usb key that contained multiple applications. Most could be run straight from the key without installation. I believe Embarcadero will be licensing the technology at some stage.
If you are using a programming language such as Delphi or C++ with little in the way of external dependencies, a portable application is straight forward to develop. For .net, it is much harder, but can be done with Mono, or something like Virtual Application Studio.