Ask Slashdot: Chromeless Cross-Platform Browser? 145
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)."
Use Prism? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand. Prism [mozillalabs.com] 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.
Why not create a native application? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Do you remember back before 2000? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Use Prism? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.