12/8/2019 How To Develop A Desktop App For Mac
See before you start using this. Open Web Apps for Desktop enables free Marketplace apps to be installed by Firefox Desktop into a user's Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. Once installed on a desktop computer, these apps run similarly to any other desktop app. These apps are executed using Web Runtime for Desktop, a component of Firefox for Desktop. With Open Web Apps for Desktop you don't need any knowledge of desktop development, or to take any extra development steps, to deliver a 'native' desktop app. Note: Open Web Apps for Desktop is supported in Firefox for Desktop 29 and later. Also from Firefox 35 there is a deprecated Apps button in the browser, see the Mozilla Support articles and for more details.
The Web Runtime for Desktop supports 12 APIs to access desktop capabilities such as, and more. You can see a: The 'D' cells under 'Availability' provide information on the status of each API in Web Runtime for Desktop.
The green cells indicate that the API is available in full. You can also mouseover individual cells for more information.
In future releases, Web Runtime for Desktop will add support for additional APIs. Note: Apps without a responsive design may not display very well across widely differing platforms, e.g. Firefox OS and desktop computers. This is because desktop users will be using screens with different resolutions (DPI) and sizes compared to those found on Firefox OS devices. You should design apps with responsive design principals in mind. For more information on responsive design, see the. Using Open Web Apps for Desktop from Firefox Marketplace This section provides details on how you make use of Open Web Apps for Desktop, how it affects the Firefox Marketplace experience, and information on app updates.
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Submitting an app When you, you choose the Firefox for Desktop when defining its. Reviewing an app When your app is reviewed, the reviewer installs your app from the reviewer section in Firefox Marketplace. When they do this from a desktop, Firefox for Desktop install the app onto their computer. They can then run the app and complete the review as normal.
Installing an app When a user selects your app in the Firefox Marketplace the follows occurs:. displays the app's details and Free button as normal. When the user clicks Free they're shown the standard Firefox Marketplace install confirmation dialog.
The dialog lists the permissions requested by privileged apps; the dialog will include wording to explain any concerns users may have. When the user confirms that they want to continue with the installation, / are invoked as you'd expect (depending on whether it's a hosted or packaged app) and Firefox for Desktop requests the details of the app from Firefox Marketplace and in the case of packaged apps, downloads the app's.zip file.
Firefox for Desktop then installs the app into the desktop OS (the packaged zip, or the hosted app's assets, if it has ), so it will then be available offline. Once the app has been installed, the user will find the app in their desktop OS as normal.
The process to use and remove the app is the same as they'd expect from other desktop apps. Keeping apps up-to-date The Web runtime for Desktop provides a mechanism for letting users know an update is available to an app. If your app is hosted, whenever you make a change on its server, users will pick up changes the next time they run your app. For all other changes, you need to add a new version to the Firefox Marketplace:. For a hosted app, the link to the app's hosting server containing the updated manifest file.
For a packaged app a zip file containing the updated app manifest and app content. When the app is running, the Web Runtime for Desktop makes a daily check on the version number in the app’s manifest and if it has changed notifies the users that an update is available. The user can then choose to install the new version. Using Open Web Apps for Desktop from other locations You can serve a hosted or packaged Open Web App from your own Marketplace or server, in this case Firefox automatically installs the app using Open Web Apps for Desktop. When a new version is detected at the location of the original Open Web App, Firefox also handles updates to the app. How Open Web Apps for Desktop installs apps This section describes how Open Web Apps for Desktop are installed by Firefox for Desktop. When the user chooses to install your app, as described above, Firefox for Desktop requests the app's manifest file and icons from the hosting server (the Firefox Marketplace, or wherever else the app is hosted):.
For hosted apps, the main manifest. For packaged apps, the mini manifest.
For packaged apps, Firefox for Desktop requests the app's zip archive from the hosting server. Now Firefox for Desktop installs the app:.
For hosted apps, by wrapping the hosting URL in a Windows, Mac, or Linux executable and placing that on the desktop computer. For packaged apps, by wrapping the app's content in a Windows, Mac, or Linux executable and placing that on the desktop computer. Important: Users on Apple Mac computers may need to adjust their system settings to enable installation from Firefox Marketplace. For more information read The following diagram offers an alternative representation of the workflow for the installation of an app using Open Web Apps for Desktop: FAQ Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about Open Web Apps for Desktop.
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Will I be able to deliver paid apps and those with in-app purchases? This feature is planned, when it's implemented Open Web Apps for Desktop is given access to the trusted UI, and all payment processes for in-app purchases, so in-app payments will function as normal.
How To Make Apps Appear On Desktop
Can I debug my apps when they are running on a desktop? To access the console (and other remote developer tools), start the app from a command line with the -debug flag and optionally specifying a port (default: 6000). For example, on a Mac the Mykzilla test app is started with: /Applications/Mykzilla.app/Contents/MacOS/webapprt -debug 6000 Then, in Firefox, on the Developer Tools menu click Connect and connect to the “localhost” host at the port you specified.
After clicking Connect in Firefox, go back to your app and confirm the connection. Then return to Firefox and select a “tab” (i.e. An open window in your app) or “Main Process” to debug the Web Runtime’s chrome code.
Then a copy of Firefox’s Remote Developer Tools should open in a new window, and it should be connected to the “tab” you selected.
UPDATE 01/07/13: added instructions to enable Hyper-V in Parallels Desktop VM Interested in developing apps for Windows Phone 8, but you are developing on a Mac? No problem.check out the guide below to find a variety of options. First you should consider whether to build native WP8 applications or Web applications.
Applications will run directly on the phone platform, and will deliver advanced performance and a fully integrated experience to the end user. Web applications developed with HTML5 and JavaScript will take advantage of the Web standards support of Internet Explorer 10 and the cross platform nature of HTML5 applications.There is a lot of debate about which way to go, native app or Web app with HTML5, and I would say that the answer is it depends. In this post, I will try to present the main options to go one way or the other based on the assumption that you have a Mac and want to stick to it.
WP8 application development on a Mac To build applications for Windows Phone, you need Visual Studio 2012 and the WP8 SDK. There is a and that allows you to do pretty much all you need to build and publish an application to the Windows Phone store:. Write and debug code in an advanced code editor.
Compile to app package. Test the application in an emulator leveraging advanced features. Connecting and deploying to an actual device and do cross-debugging, and performance analysis. and these are only the basic features available, there are plenty more!
Folx enables users to resume broken downloads, download multiple files simultaneously, split downloads into threads to make the download process go faster, prioritize download tasks and adjust the download speed. Folx allows the user to download files in either the browser, or using the Folx application itself. The initial version was released on 10 October 2011 with the latest update being released on 26 May 2016. Download folx for mac.
How To Develop A Desktop App For Mac Windows 10
Visual Studio 2012 runs on Windows 8 and Windows 7 but the Windows Phone emulator relies on Hyper-V, which comes only in Windows 8 64 bit. So basically, you need to have a Windows 8 64 bit install if you want to leverage the emulator, and you need a way to have Hyper-V enabled in your Windows 8 install. Using a recent Macintosh, you have a couple of options to run Windows 8:. Run Windows 8 on your Mac natively using Boot Camp.
Run Windows 8 in a virtual environment using software like VMWare Fusion 5 or Parallels Desktop 8 for your Mac There is plenty of documentation online on how to set up the environments for both options to get Windows to run on your Mac, and you can also find details on MSDN. Boot Camp If you want to go the Boot Camp way, once you have set up Windows 8, you can go ahead and follow the default instructions to. VMWare Fusion 5 or Parallels Desktop 8 If you want to use VMWare Fusion or Parallels and still be able to use the WP8 Emulator, here are the steps you need to follow:. Install VMWare Fusion 5 or Parallels Desktop 8if you don’t have it yet. Download Windows 8 64 bits ISO:. you can find the evaluation version on the evaluation center. If you want the retail version then it is a little tricky on a Mac as there is no way to download the retail iso directly.
The trick consists in installing the evaluation version of Windows 8 on a VMware Fusion VM or Parallels following the below instructions, then from Windows 8, run the Windows 8 setup (a link is available in the first lines of the email you will receive after the purchase of Windows 8) that will offer the option of downloading the retail ISO after entering you product key as described. Create a new VM setting up the below parameters:. On WMWare Fusion 5:. ensure that you have the following settings (be sure to check the “Enable hypervisor applications in this Virtual machine” option):.
Important:. Hyper-V requires at least 2 cores to be present.
The Windows Phone Emulator will use 258MB or 512MB virtual memory, therefore, don’t be shy with memory assigned to the VM and assign at least 2 GB. In the advanced settings, ensure you have selected “Preferred virtualization engine: Intel VT-x with EPT” option. Modify the.vmx file to add or modify the following settings:.
hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = 'FALSE'. mce.enable = 'TRUE'. vhv.enable = 'TRUE'. On Parallels Desktop 8:.
Ensure that you have the following settings for the new VM (go into VM SettingsGeneralCPUs):. Still in settings, you need to enable virtualization pass-thru support in OptionsOptimizationsNested Virtualization. Install Windows 8 on your VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop VM (you can find plenty of guides online on how to install a VM from an ISO). Once Windows 8 is installed,. The SDK install will setup the Hyper-V environment and will set things up for you to be able to use the Emulator within the VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop image.
On VMware Fusion on Parallels Desktop You are now set to build, debug and test WP8 applications. You can start your development and debugging by leveraging the emulator and its tools, and you can consider using an actual Windows Phone 8 device, plugging it in your Mac, and setting things up so that the USB device shows up in the VM. You can find extensive information on how to use Visual Studio 2012 for Windows Phone 8 development, along with its emulator, and how to publish an application, get samples, as well as everything a developer needs.
WP8 Web applications development on a Mac Here we are talking about two different things:. Development for mobile websites that will render well in the Windows Phone 8 browser. HTML5 application development using the Web Browser control hosted by a native application, model that is used by frameworks and tools such as Apache Cordova (a.k.a. PhoneGap), also known as hybrid applications. Windows 8 offers a “native HTML5/JS” model that allows you to develop applications in HTML5 and JavaScript that will execute directly on top of the application platform, but we will not discuss this model here as Windows Phone 8 proposes a slightly different model for HTML5 and JS applications development. On Windows Phone 8, in both cases mentioned above, the HTML5/JavaScript/CSS code will be rendered and executed in the same Internet Explorer 10 engine on Windows Phone 8.
This means that whether you are writing a mobile website, or a PhoneGap type application, you can do so on your usual tool or editor all the way down to the debugging and testing phases. While you can do a lot of debugging in a Web browser for your HTML5/JS code, you will need to do actual tests and debugging on the actual platform (WP8 Emulator or/and actual device). Even if you are using Web standards, you need to consider that the level of support might not be the same on all platforms. And if you are using third party code, you also need to ensure that the code doesn’t contain platform specific elements so that things will run correctly. For example, you need to get rid of any dependencies on WebKit specifics.
How To Develop A Desktop App For Mac Free
Making sure your Web code is not platform specific When writing this code, you need to consider the various platforms that your mobile Web application will be used. Obviously the less specifics there are for each of the platforms, the better for you as a developer! Good news is that HTML5 support is getting better and better across modern mobile browsers.
IE10 in Windows Phone 8 is no exception and brings extended standards support, hardware acceleration and great rendering performances. You can take a look at the following site directly from your Windows Phone 8 device to check that out: To learn more on how to make sure your mobile Web code will render well on Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Phone 8 as well as on other modern mobile browsers, you can read this. Testing and debugging your Web application for WP8 on a Mac Once you have clean HTML5 code that runs and renders well in a Web browser, you will need to test it on IE10 on a Windows Phone 8 device or emulator. In the IE10 desktop, there are powerful debugging tools (“F12”), which is not the case on Windows Phone 8. One of the recommended ways to do advanced debugging is to leverage the “F12” debugging capabilities on IE10 Desktop in order to cover most if not all of the debugging and testing cases for your mobile Web application for Windows Phone 8.
For a Mac, you will need to look into the various options to install a Windows 8 virtual machine, which are mentioned in the beginning of this article, and load your code in Internet Explorer 10 within Windows 8. Once IE is launched, press the 'F12' key or go to the settings menu and select “F12 Developer tools.” In the debugging tool at the bottom, you can then change the User agent setting and the resolution from the “Tools” menu to match what IE10 on Windows Phone 8 exposes.
Once you have done these tests on Internet Explorer 10 desktop, you can deploy and test on an actual Windows Phone 8 device or on the emulator (see previous chapters on how to set things up to make the emulator work on a Mac). With these steps you should be set to start developing and deploying Windows Phone 8 applications from your Mac.
But there are certainly other tips and tricks that you will figure out and you may already know. We would love to hear from you to make this post even more useful for developers wishing to expand their reach to the Windows Phone 8 platform. Do not hesitate to comment on this post with your suggestions, ideas, tips. I found a solution regarding the networking issue: Under VMWare, when starting the Windows 8 VM, VMWare gives a warning and requests permission for the VM to monitor network traffic. The specific message is: 'A virtual machine is attempting to monitor all network traffic, which requires administrator access.
Type your password to allow this.' Clicking 'Cancel' results in the Windows 8 VM having an active network but the Windows Phone 8 emulator not having a working internet connection. Entering the administrator password provides me with working internet in emulator.
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