I'm looking to write a plugin for IE that will do a little parsing of any webpage and display a layer atop that page that my users can interact with (an analytics heatmap might be my closest example). I'm trying to decide whether this should be written as an Applet (which I'm leaning towards), or an ActiveX control?
Also, anyone able to pont me toward basic examples would be nice as well.
As you are targeting IE you might want to have a look at BHO (Browser Helper Objects), too:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250436.aspx
Related
I am trying to build a Powerpoint Addin using the new JS-based stack that Microsoft has introduced. As part of the development, I am evaluating the support that the current JS libraries are providing. While VSTO/COM-based plugins have been around for quite some time, lack of cross-platform support is a challenge(especially for Mac and now Web), which is also the reason I want to opt for Web-based Addin(JS). But Powerpoint doesn't have a HOST API as Excel or Word does which makes things slightly challenging.
Thus here are the capabilities I want to have from the JS stack -
Ability to add and change the properties of shapes. While adding a shape doesn't have a specific API function, I was able to add it as an SVG object. Is there an easier way to change the properties of shapes and
Adding links to shapes to different slides.
Initiating other office apps like Excel and the ability to edit/read data from those instances.
Apply Slide Transitions.
Ability to connect other data resources through a URI.
Store state of shapes and slides.
It would be great if someone can point to the appropriate sections of the documentation which might help me find answers to this.
Most of what you are requesting cannot yet be done in a PowerPoint Web Add-in. But you can so some of it; for example, "connect to other data sources through a URI". I recommend that you look through the Develop section of the documentation.
My problem is very similar to the one posted here:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Plotting-Addresses-Maps-t1968130.html
except that thread never found any solutions. Basically, I'm working on an Access form that has a datasheet as a subform. Upon clicking a button on the main form I'm trying to make it so that a browser window opens up and, using the address columns from the spreadsheet data in the subform, plot all the address markers listed. I've looked up a lot of ways to attempt this but I've yet to find a way that seems to work.
I'm not even sure if it's possible to plot multiple markers on Google Maps, but according to research (and after trying it myself) it seems like it isn't, although I don't want to rule it out entirely because I'm still not 100% sure. However I know both Google Earth and batchgeo.com do allow this. I still want to try and do this on Google Maps, but if that doesn't work I want to try to do it using batchgeo.com and if that still doesn't work, then Google Earth (I don't want to make the user download external software if possible).
If it helps, from what I've read API's seem like a useful tool, though I'm not sure how to apply it to an Access form, it seems more like a way to embed to already existing websites.
I'd really appreciate if someone could help me figure out how to approach this problem!
Maybe this would help?
http://ramblings.mcpher.com/Home/excelquirks/getmaps/mapmarkers
It is Excel but should be translatable.
Here is another example, this time using Access:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Google-Maps-Multiple-Mar-t1973499.html
...from what I've read API's seem like a useful tool, though I'm not
sure how to apply it to an Access form, it seems more like a way to
embed to already existing websites.
You're right. There's no way, that I'm aware of, to embed a Google Maps object in a form (like an ActiveX control). Microsoft MapPoint is a software product that lets you do Map integration by way of an ActiveX control (no need to use HTML and/or javascript).
What I usually do on a project like you're working on is I get my HTML page working the way I want it to, outside and independent of MS Access. You should be able to program and test the HTML file locally without having to use an actual web server. Just use something like NotePad++ or Sublime Text Editor 2 to write your HTML and Javascript and then open the file in your browser to see if it works. I'm quite sure you'll need to use Javascript in your HTML page to make this work. That's what the Google Maps API is all about.
After you have your webpage working, then you will have to go into Access and write code to create that web page on the fly with the address data for the current data set. You can just write it out to the Windows Temp folder and then open your browser control that that web page.
Julian Knight's answer links to more specifics on how to create the HTML page on the fly. It looks like gobble-de-gook, mostly because it is. Outputting HTML/Javascript/CSS from VBA is far less than optimal. This is why you troubleshoot it outside of Access, as much as you can.
I'm about to start a Web application that will use interactive generated 3D content. Aim is to let it run natively in the browser, i.e. no Flash is allowed, only JavaScript + HTML5.
Apart from using pure WebGL it's better to use a lib that will offer a more high level interface.
The approach of X3DOM looks great for me - and it looks like it's supposed to become native in the browser and the lib will pave the road.
But after my first impressions I'm not sure if it's lightweight enough. Apart from the 400kb JS-File it slows down Firefox.
The features I need are not many. The whole scene set up could be easily done by "hand". But I need user interaction including to figure out where the user clicks. And later I want to be able to load and insert 3D objects in a common file format.
PS: Browsers of choice are Firefox and Webkit based ones. Desktop and Mobile ones. I don't care about IE.
PPS: Yes, I know the question: WebGL Framework
X3DOM is great when you come from an X3D background (and developed by great people), but if you have no preference watsoever, Three.JS would be my pick.
I looked at most WebGL frameworks just last week, and it indeed seems almost every one of them is in the 300kB range. That's too heavy for me, too. Luckily I found lightgl.js which has everything you need to get started in 28kB, MIT license.
The main thing for me is just abstracting canvas, shader and texture initialization. But lightgl.js does also have some mouse handling and model loading etc.
i think the decision boils down to:
do you want to have a more design or programmer approach.
x3dom: its leveraging of x3d for describing the scene lends itself to a more designer approach, with just the adding of the x3dom css and js one can do this :
<X3D><Scene><Shape><Box/></Shape</Scene></X3d>
three.js: only allows for scene generation through javascript, and a lot of additional code is necessary just to set up the canvas. view the source of this simple box example: http://stemkoski.github.com/Three.js/Template.html
neither way is wrong, i prefer designing the scene and then using js when needed for any computations.
I have some data that is displayed in a bar chart, using Google's Visualization API. Was simple enough until designers redesigned it... Now it appears to be something that is beyond what Google can help me with.
Given the attached mockup (and note the finer details like reflection and gradients!)- how would you go about building it? Using some existing graphing libraries? Homebrew from the ground up?
Thanks for any advice.
If you need to adhere to the custom design requirements as depicted in the image above, I would build a charting application using a more generalized graphics library such as Rapheal.
While it doesn't provide a simple API for plugging data into a chart, it does provide the ability to build a chart with the following:
a variety of shapes (i.e. the bars)
gradients
embedded images (i.e. the background)
You can change the visual effect using CSS.
Ofcourse you can use chuckx recommendation of Rapheal which is a SVG based Javascript Library. It can accept JSON values so say if you have JSON from Google API you could feed in directly.
Option 2 : HTML Canvas. There are lot of HTML 5 canvas libraries like Kinect, fabric.js powerful javascript canvas libraries
I'm looking to build an interactive web-based org chart for a large organization. I somewhat like the interface at ancestry.com where you can hover over people and pan/zoom around and click on different nodes to make them the root.
Ideally, I'd like it if people could belong to multiple organizational entities like committees, working groups, etc. In other words the API should support graphs in general, not just trees.
I'd like to be able to visually explode each organizational substructure into substituents by clicking on it, with a nice animation of the employees ballooning or spilling out so you can really interactively drill down through the organization.
I found http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery/orgchart.html but it looks a bit rudimentary.
I know there are desktop tools like OrgPlus and Visio that can build static charts but I'm really looking for a free, web-based API with open standards-based output like SVG or HTML5 Canvas elements rather than Flash or some proprietary output. Something I can embed into a custom web application and style myself. Something interactive.
Check my solution on github: OrgChart.svg This is a modern full SVG orgchart with support of custom styling, tip-over / stacking possibility in the best known form. I would be very happy if it helps someone. It is based on snap.svg.
I ended up using the SpaceTree API from the Javascript InfoVis Toolkit to build my org chart:
http://philogb.github.com/jit/static/v20/Docs/files/Visualizations/Spacetree-js.html
I've had a go at building this in d3.js. It was originally built for data pulled from Yammer but now it will work with any csv - like this one.
Here's the repo and here's a demo. You will need to know a little html/javascript to customise it for your application.
There is this one for asp.net but I have only ever added it to my bookmarks so I can't vouch for how standards compliant it is:
http://www.orgchartcomponent.com/
Something you should also consider when you are looking in to this is your charting requirements. Many org charts only support a single top node. If you wanted to map a family tree for example then this might not be the case.