With Lua, it seems you're able to do a lot with it, perhaps you could script it so that the "pane" is actually a webpage... Pop open your I.E. Explorer, or whatever, and send the info directly to the webpage as html, I think that would probably work quite nicely. I don't have the slightest idea how it would be done, but hey, thats why you guys are the experts, and I'm only an amateur
Was thinking of "pane" windows
Posted by David Berthiaume on Sun 12 Dec 2004 12:32 AM — 6 posts, 25,697 views.
Er, yes I suppose. I might leave that as an exercise for a scripting expert. :)
Can I say Ugh! While the idea has some merit, you would be better off adapting something like Nick's external window thing to use the seperete WebBrowser control that you can use in your own applications, or I understand Mozilla has COM methods too. Using the full IE for this is like towing a 50 foot trailer behind a sherman tank, just to pick up two bags of groceries from the market. Mozilla/Firefox (assuming I am right about the COM accessability) would be more like leaving the trailer at home and using a much faster Abrams tank, but it is still less insane than IE.
The WebBrowser control however basically 'is' IE, but stripped down to the absolute bare essentials. While this means some things, like remembering what the text was you typed in a form on a previous page, have to be added by the user and are not automatically handled, it will allow you anything that IE would on a page, including autostarting plugins for movies, etc. Basically, it is IE without the extra 90% of special menus, gadgets, features and bloat that take up a lot of system resources and cause IE to run like it was powered by over weight hampsters. In the simplest terms, adding a WebBrowser control to a window properly would provide identical function, supporting all the same functions that IE has (or all the important ones, like 'navigate'.
*However*, the problem with using a web browser of any kind for this is that they are not intended to display html handed to them from another source. They are only capable of the 'navigate' property, which means it needs a local or remote file to navigate to. You can't change the page contents dynamically, save for through the pages own script itself. I suppose you could create a proxy that both a predesigned page and your own script both connect to, then alter the contents that way, but the problem is that this is not 100% reliable. IE refuses to follow the W3C standards on it, nor is anyone else following IE's lead, since it is not standard. The result is somethings are possible in IE, some in other browsers and neither totally support what you would need to do. Worse, the only 'usable' method I know of, that you can be sure will work 100% of the time, requires the page to reload every time you need to change the contents. Believe me.
If it was as simple as you want, some of us would already be doing it. ;)
The WebBrowser control however basically 'is' IE, but stripped down to the absolute bare essentials. While this means some things, like remembering what the text was you typed in a form on a previous page, have to be added by the user and are not automatically handled, it will allow you anything that IE would on a page, including autostarting plugins for movies, etc. Basically, it is IE without the extra 90% of special menus, gadgets, features and bloat that take up a lot of system resources and cause IE to run like it was powered by over weight hampsters. In the simplest terms, adding a WebBrowser control to a window properly would provide identical function, supporting all the same functions that IE has (or all the important ones, like 'navigate'.
*However*, the problem with using a web browser of any kind for this is that they are not intended to display html handed to them from another source. They are only capable of the 'navigate' property, which means it needs a local or remote file to navigate to. You can't change the page contents dynamically, save for through the pages own script itself. I suppose you could create a proxy that both a predesigned page and your own script both connect to, then alter the contents that way, but the problem is that this is not 100% reliable. IE refuses to follow the W3C standards on it, nor is anyone else following IE's lead, since it is not standard. The result is somethings are possible in IE, some in other browsers and neither totally support what you would need to do. Worse, the only 'usable' method I know of, that you can be sure will work 100% of the time, requires the page to reload every time you need to change the contents. Believe me.
If it was as simple as you want, some of us would already be doing it. ;)
Quote:
Worse, the only 'usable' method I know of, that you can be sure will work 100% of the time, requires the page to reload every time you need to change the contents. Believe me.
You could always write a Java applet that would connect via stream to the data source... *grin*
Worse, the only 'usable' method I know of, that you can be sure will work 100% of the time, requires the page to reload every time you need to change the contents. Believe me.
Just make it refresh every 10 seconds or whatever. And have your client write to a html file whenever it needs to be updated.
Actually, a XML file (and a custom interpreter) might be more appropriate.
Didn't Nick already write a stand alone window which took input from the client?
Edit: I'm looking, I can't find it [the external window], anyone want to help? Also, did Nick release the source for that? so we can add to/tweak it?
Actually, a XML file (and a custom interpreter) might be more appropriate.
Didn't Nick already write a stand alone window which took input from the client?
Edit: I'm looking, I can't find it [the external window], anyone want to help? Also, did Nick release the source for that? so we can add to/tweak it?
Here is the post for new custom status bar window which includes the source.