My web-app records users via webcam and microphone. I want to use HTML/JS for the controls and content, so I created two separate Flex modules:
* A "Webcam Setup" module that lets you choose your camera and mic input devices
* A "record" module that lets the user record and submit the recording
When I embed either of these on the page, since they access the user's Camera/Mic object, Flash shows the Privacy dialog that says "[mysite] is requesting access to your camera and microphone. If you click Allow, you may be recorded."
The problem is, if I answer Yes in the Setup module, and later add the Record module to the page using Javascript, it again shows the Privacy dialog.
Is there a way to avoid the second privacy popup?
I would think that saying "Yes" for [mysite] would store that permission for at least that session, but apparently not.
What I've tried
I tried combining them into one SWF, adding it to the page once and moving the DOM element with jQuery's append() function when needed. When I move it, however, it reloads and asks me again.
Imagine if [mysite] was, say, blogger.com or livejournal.com (or, if it were still around, geocities.com). Would you want a "yes" response on that site to be good for every page under that domain?
Rememeber, just because you promise (cross your heart & hope to die) not to abuse the security hole you request, doesn't mean they can allow you to have that security hole.
Eventually, I found a usable workaround, similar to what I originally tried (above).
I combined the setup and record modules into one SWF. I first show the setup screen. When the user hits the Continue button on my page, Javascript calls a function in the SWF to swap to the Record screen.
I then move the <div> containing the Flash object to another location on page using absolute positioning, and resize the object.
Previously, I was trying to use jQuery's append() function to move the div within the DOM, and that was causing the SWF to reload. Just changing position and size does actually work.
You could build the "record" component to simply send and receive signals using an API you've created for your "setup" component (which has already been authorized, meaning one auth & two swfs) by using the LocalConnection class:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/net/LocalConnection.html
This seems far closer to best practice than the other implementations mentioned, which smell a bit hacky and would probably confuse anyone who may inherit the codebase in the future.
Related
I am trying to block URLs with a certain keyword in a JavaFX webview. So far, I have tried using webEngine.locationProperty().addListener() to listen for a change in state. While this is successful in blocking the URL, it unfortunately leaves the locationProperty set to the value that I am trying to block. This causes problems for links that use references on the page.
Two solutions I have tried for setting locationProperty back to its correct value:
Calling webEngine.load(). This causes the page to refresh and the user loses work.
Calling webEngine.getHistory().go(0). As it says in the documentation, this does nothing.
I can think of two general ways to solve this problem:
Find a place earlier in the chain of properties than locationProperty that gets changed to listen.
Figure out a way to change locationProperty back to its correct value without reloading the page. (I think this might be possible through reflection which I've been trying to avoid up to this point.)
Do either of these solutions sound reasonable and if so what is the best way to implement them?
I noticed that the PlayN doc says that you can only call Playn.run once. Here is my scenario and I'm looking for advice on how to tackle it.
Let's say I have a list of games to choose from in a menu on my web page. Upon clicking a game, I call PlayN.run on that game and it runs on my web page inside the playn-root div. Now lets say I want the user to be able to stop and load a new game by selecting a different one in the game list and load that into the div and play that.
How would I go about tackling that? Do I need to re-register the HtmlPlatform all over again and the play the new game? Or is there a way to destroy the current game and then play the new game using the existing platform which is already registered in PlayN?
The easiest route would be to just use normal HTML links and have each PlayN game be on its own web page (which could be in an iframe if you don't want the URL to change at the top of the browser).
Trying to clear out and reinitialize everything internally is just a big waste of effort when the web browser will take care of all of that for you when you reload the web page.
For a specialized purpose with Aweber regarding a newsletter subscription, I have a page loading a nested IFRAME inside, and both reside on the same domain. (Many other stackoverflow posts talk about different domains, but this question deals only with the same domain.) I need a cross-platform way (including browsers as old as the dawn of IE6) for the two to communicate.
For example, someone fills out name and email and clicks a checkbox, and the hidden IFRAME next to the checkbox sits in a setInterval() loop watching for that. When it receives notification, it grabs the name and email and does a form post.
I thought at first that I could just drop a cookie in the parent page, and then the IFRAME child could then sit in an interval watching for that cookie. But my tests show that this won't work. The cookie gets created -- but the IFRAME can't see it. So, I tried the meta-refresh technique in the IFRAME, and again it couldn't see that cookie for some reason.
The only solution I can come up with is that the parent page will take the checkbox click (we use jQuery) and do an AJAX data push to the server into a database. The IFRAME can then check on an interval back to the server via AJAX to see if the database value has changed, and react to it if so. But this seems like an over-engineered solution and I'm looking for an easier alternative that works cross-platform, even in earlier browsers from the timeframe of IE6 and forward.
It's much more simple: In the iframe, you can access the parent variable, which contains the parent window. So you can use parent.document to find the form, read the values, etc.
On stackoverflow, and other websites, if you start making a change to form elements and then you try to navigate away from the page, you will get a confirmation message asking if you are sure you want to discard your changes.
This seems relatively easy to do by hand, but impractical to apply across an entire site. Is there any generic solution that can be plopped onto a page as a control (or even jQuery plugin) which will track IsDirty for all fields (without having to specify each field by hand)?
You can use the window.onbeforeunload event.
See also How can I override the OnBeforeUnload dialog and replace it with my own?
A possiblity would be to clone a selection of all your inputs when the page is loaded (and data into it as well).
You could then do a compare as desribed here:
http://chris-barr.com/entry/comparing_jquery_objects/
Word of warning though, this may be costly, performance wise.
I have an ASP.Net application which as desired feature, users would like to be able to take a screenshot. While I know this can be simulated, it would be really great to have a way to take a URL (or the current rendered page), and turn it into an image which can be stored on the server.
Is this crazy? Is there a way to do it? If so, any references?
I can tell you right now that there is no way to do it from inside the browser, nor should there be. Imagine that your page embeds GMail in an iframe. You could then steal a screenshot of the person's GMail inbox!
This could be made safe by having the browser "black out" all iframes and embeds that would violate cross-domain restrictions.
You could certainly write an extension to do this, but be aware of the security considerations outlined above.
Update: You can use a canvas utility function to get a screenshot of a page on the same origin as your code. There's even a lib to allow you to do this: http://experiments.hertzen.com/jsfeedback/
You can find other possible answers here: Using HTML5/Canvas/JavaScript to take screenshots
Browsershots has an XML-RPC interface and available source code (in Python).
I used the free assembly UrlScreenshot.dll which you can download here.
Works nicely!
There is also WebSiteScreenShot but it's not free.
You could try a browser plugin like IE7 Pro for Internet Explorer which allows you to save a screenshot of the current site to a file on disk. I'm sure there is a comparable plugin for FireFox out there as well.
If you want to do something like you described. You need to call an external process that prints the IE output as described here.
Why don't you take another approach?
If you have the need that users can view the same content over again, then it sounds like that is a business requirement for your application, and so you should be building it into your application.
Structure the URL so that when the same user (assuming you have sessions and the application shows different things to different users) visits the same URL, they always see same thing. They can then bookmark the URL locally, or you can even have an application feature that saves it in a user profile.
Part of this would mean making "clean urls", eg, site.com/view/whatever-information-needed-here.
If you are doing time-based data, where it changes as it gets older, there are probably a couple possible approaches.
If your data is not changing on a regular basis, then you could make the "current" page always, eg, site.com/view/2008-10-20 (add hour/minute/second as appropriate).
If it is refreshing, and/or updating more regularly, have the "current" page as site.com/view .. but allow specifying the exact time afterwards. In this case, you'd have to have a "link to this page" type function, which would link to the permanent URL with the full date/time. Look to google maps for inspiration here-- if you scroll across a map, you can always click "link to here" and it will provide a link that includes the GPS coordinates, objects on the map, etc. In that case it's not a very friendly url but it does work quite well. :)