LinuxMCE Forums

General => Users => Topic started by: bulek on March 28, 2009, 10:30:24 am

Title: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: bulek on March 28, 2009, 10:30:24 am
Hi,

in our home we have central touchscreen located in kitchen and we control eveything through UI1.

But since a lot of usefull family stuff is also present on Web, I would like to enhance touchscreen experience when web browsing under on-screen Orbiter.

Are there any alternative browsers, Firefox add-ons, special web-page changing sites or tools for better touchscreen experience (I remember similar featurs on mobile browsers) or anything similar for doing convenient web browsing with touchscreen ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.



in
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: Marie.O on March 28, 2009, 10:36:34 am
Does this help
[urlhttp://www.mozilla.org/access/features][/url]
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: bulek on March 28, 2009, 08:14:04 pm
Does this help
[urlhttp://www.mozilla.org/access/features][/url]
Hi,

thanks for help. I found this one could be useful
http://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Accessibility_Themes.php (http://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Accessibility_Themes.php)

But mainly the problem is that 7.10 version of Firefox is a bit outdated. Has anyone tried or know if Firefox can be safely upgraded ?


Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: totallymaxed on March 28, 2009, 08:21:04 pm
Does this help
[urlhttp://www.mozilla.org/access/features][/url]
Hi,

thanks for help. I found this one could be useful
http://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Accessibility_Themes.php (http://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Accessibility_Themes.php)

But mainly the problem is that 7.10 version of Firefox is a bit outdated. Has anyone tried or know if Firefox can be safely upgraded ?


Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.


We have Firefox 3.03 working in our Dianemo installs... used the latest Firefox package from the 7.10 Ubuntu repos

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: tschak909 on March 28, 2009, 08:31:18 pm
I've mentioned this before, but I guess I'll mention it again...

The Firefox we are currently running, needs to be replaced with an xulrunner based app, that can respond to DCE commands.

At this point, we can make some needed changes:

(Make a better interface for pad orbiters to be able to:

* View pages on the pads themselves, or
* bounce them to individual media directors OR to workstations (running an agent)
* Be able to highlight links on TV better (this is the one thing I liked about WebTV)
* Be able to scroll more effectively
* Get rid of extraneous buttons and features.

etc.

Come on guys, please, am I the only one who is thinking out of the box, here? This is getting frustrating.

-Thom
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: colinjones on March 28, 2009, 10:59:34 pm
Thom

I think Bulek is just trying to address an immediate family need by upgrading his ff. And yes, Bulek you can do that from KDE, I did to mine. I think I ended up with 2 versions of ff installed and had to muck around to ensure that Computing was using the right one..

But yes, Thom, on the strategic vision for integrating browsing with the DCE environment... I remember you mentioning it previously, I think that is a great idea!! Do you think this should start out with a DCE wrapper around normal ff, or go straight to a native type device? I understand that ff 3.0 is already based on XUL?
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: tschak909 on March 28, 2009, 11:14:22 pm
It's simpler to make a new wrapper, either by directly instantiating XPCOM stuff in a two-tiered thread configuration, or by doing a quick implementation to run in XULRunner. The Point is:

* There is too much UI in Firefox for a TV based web browser, not that anyone notices...but...
* There needs to be DCE communication with the rest of the system so that Orbiter can present buttons for UI, and present necessary feedback.

-Thom
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: totallymaxed on March 29, 2009, 03:17:14 pm
It's simpler to make a new wrapper, either by directly instantiating XPCOM stuff in a two-tiered thread configuration, or by doing a quick implementation to run in XULRunner. The Point is:

* There is too much UI in Firefox for a TV based web browser, not that anyone notices...but...
* There needs to be DCE communication with the rest of the system so that Orbiter can present buttons for UI, and present necessary feedback.

-Thom


I agree Thom 100% and we're looking at adding web apps as a mediatype and using XULRunner as the engine. We need this because we want to add services like the BBC's iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer) as a mediatype in the Media menu.

However I agree with Collin - the LinuxMCE-0710 release shipped with Firefox 2.02 and Flash 9.0x and these increasingly will not support many Web sites and in the case of Firefox has significant security issues. So we took the view that updating to Firefox 3.03 and Flash 10 was the right intermediate step to take and therefore released an update to rectify this.

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: colinjones on March 29, 2009, 11:00:41 pm
That sounds great Andrew! I too have problems with ABC's iview http://www.abc.net.au/iview/ (National broadcaster, equivalent to BBC) they have an extremely slick Flash interface but ff/flash9 doesn't like the video bit and crashes out... I know ABC have content restrictions for overseas IP addresses, so I'm not sure at what point that link will crap out on a UK IP address, be interesting to know how far it lets you get :)
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: totallymaxed on March 30, 2009, 01:31:29 pm
That sounds great Andrew! I too have problems with ABC's iview http://www.abc.net.au/iview/ (National broadcaster, equivalent to BBC) they have an extremely slick Flash interface but ff/flash9 doesn't like the video bit and crashes out... I know ABC have content restrictions for overseas IP addresses, so I'm not sure at what point that link will crap out on a UK IP address, be interesting to know how far it lets you get :)

It will not let me in from the UK...as expected. But we have found that none of the heavily flashed sites that we previously tested fail now with Firefox 3.03 and Flash 10 so I would be pretty sure this would also be the case for the iView service too.

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: Marie.O on March 30, 2009, 02:31:01 pm
Maybe it is time for some proxying in various locations around the world ... ;)
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: bulek on March 30, 2009, 03:43:17 pm
Hi,

I have installed newer firefox, but it seems still not enough for those large icon themes :
Quote
dpkg -l '*firefox*'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-f/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/t-aWait/T-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                                Version                             Description
+++-===================================-===================================-======================================================================================
ii  firefox                             2.0.0.6+2nobinonly-0ubuntu1         lightweight web browser based on Mozilla
ii  firefox-3.0                         3.0~alpha8+nobinonly-0ubuntu1       lightweight web browser based on Mozilla (Development Version)
un  firefox-3.0-gnome-support           <none>                              (no description available)
un  firefox-gnome-support               <none>                              (no description available)
un  firefox-granparadiso                <none>                              (no description available)
un  firefox-trunk                       <none>                              (no description available)
ii  mozilla-firefox-locale-en-gb        2.0.0.7+1-0ubuntu2                  Mozilla Firefox English language/region package

How much work is to run firefox 3.0 and upward versions on LMCE 7.10 instead of alpha version ?

I'm also curious if one can widen slider on right side? Themes enlarge icons but no change on sliders...

Tschak: I fully agree, "embedded" browser would be nice and is ultimate goal for this, but I'm looking for acceptable solution now...

Thanks in advance,

Bulek.
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: totallymaxed on March 30, 2009, 03:57:41 pm
How much work is to run firefox 3.0 and upward versions on LinuxMCE 7.10 instead of alpha version ?

I'm also curious if one can widen slider on right side? Themes enlarge icons but no change on sliders...

Well its pretty easy to do... we just repackaged the 'stock' ubuntu package from the repository. But we did this mainly because we were changing some other Dianemo specific stuff...so i am not sure if on a standard LinuxMCE-0710 install you would need to repackage at all.

I cant say if changing the Windows controls in the way you describe would be possible - we have not tried it.

Andrew
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: chrisbirkinshaw on March 30, 2009, 04:39:45 pm
It would be cool if an alternative browser to firefox allowed you to easily browse and view video from sites like BBC iPlayer and YouTube (supporting fullscreen) using your remote control.
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: totallymaxed on March 30, 2009, 04:56:18 pm
It would be cool if an alternative browser to firefox allowed you to easily browse and view video from sites like BBC iPlayer and YouTube (supporting fullscreen) using your remote control.

Thats exactly what the XULRunner / XPCOm discussion mentioned by Thom earlier in the thread was about.

Andrew
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: tschak909 on March 30, 2009, 05:48:19 pm
among other things too. I was mainly talking about a web browser UI more apropos for 10' use.

-Thom

Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: Seer on March 30, 2009, 07:57:02 pm
Well, we can always create a theme for Firefox that meets our needs.  Check out some other examples of what people used for a "10 foot interface"

The Nintendo Wii.  This uses very large buttons to give you a few options.  Everything else is either done from the default home page, or not given to you (you can't change fonts and some other settings)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/InternetChannelFinal_Wikipedia.png)

The PS3 has this as their home page.  The use the context menu (triangle) to bring up all the options, including "Address Entry"  Included a button to "zoom" in.
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2163/2471869149_aa4df27d0e_b.jpg)

The Xbox360 doesn't include a browser, but it looks like there is a popular plugin from the MCE to use their browser.  Here's a link to a bunch of screenshots for that: http://www.anpark.com/MCEBrowser_Screenshots.aspx (http://www.anpark.com/MCEBrowser_Screenshots.aspx)

What do people think of the above methods of interacting with the browser on the TV?  Personally, I like the context menu for everything, with the possibility of putting the URL on the top of the screen.  Also, zoom is a must.  Finally, we need to create a TV friendly "home" page that has highly used bookmarked sites contained within large easy to click buttons.

Any other ideas?
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: tschak909 on March 30, 2009, 08:03:07 pm
The UI ideas are good, BUT...

Like I said...

The way to do it is to make a DCE wrapped browser that exposes a designobj type that can be embedded into orbiter screens.

This can provide what is needed. Stop messing with the other methods, and do it right!

-Thom
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: totallymaxed on March 30, 2009, 08:48:54 pm
The UI ideas are good, BUT...

Like I said...

The way to do it is to make a DCE wrapped browser that exposes a designobj type that can be embedded into orbiter screens.

This can provide what is needed. Stop messing with the other methods, and do it right!

-Thom


Well I think Seer was only referring to the UI needed for interacting with Web based Apps from a limited devices such a Wii, PS3 or MCE remote... he was not saying how that should be integrated or implimented.

Do we have enough functionality in the Orbiter to build these types of UI's around a browser designobj type?

Andrew
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: tschak909 on March 30, 2009, 08:53:23 pm
We need to add that back in. Initially this was implemented as an ActiveX embedded form of IE under Pluto 1.

The code is stubbed out in the current Orbiter, and could even be implemented by embedding WebKit into Orbiter.

-Thom
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: bearslumber on April 30, 2009, 11:39:20 pm
Hi,

I'm glad I came across this thread. I have been pulling my hair out trying to find an app that does just this.

My mate who has an x-box mentioned that the x-box live facility has an Iplayer plug-in that extracts all media available on the bbc website and presents them as a choice of thumbnails for you to click on and view. Apparently several other plugins service other sites. Also apparently it is written in python.

There is an old thread here...

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=27063 (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=27063)

and they have it working now.

I have extensive safety critical software development knowledge and dable with perl etc, and I would be delighted to get my hands dirty doing such stuff. Problem is I don't know where to start. There is mention of XULRunner and XPCom so I'll be reading up on these.

Cheers for now

Lucas

Aka Bearslumber....
Title: Re: Can I enhance Firefox and web browsing in Orbiter on touchscreen?
Post by: bearslumber on May 01, 2009, 09:11:09 am

Hi,

Heres more,

The link to the xbox Iplayer is
http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayer/ (http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayer/).

Here are some images...

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3244/2964498043_253c0d383c.jpg?v=0)

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3175/2964498237_b7153704e5.jpg?v=0)

The python script is also available at this page.

Cheers

Lucas