First of all, you need a working Firefox with WebRunner extension installed. I used Firefox 5.0, but I think this guide will also work with Firefox 4.0
This guide will package the Google homepage as stand-alone application. I know it makes not much sense, but it is fine for this guide…
1. Start the Browser and create a standalone application of the google homepage by using the WebRunner extension:
This will create your application and a shortcut on your desktop. Please check whether the application is working.
2. Create the staging directory. All files required by your app will be copied into this directory. In this guide I created the directory “c:\google_webapp”.
3. Copy the files “application.ini” and “webrunner.exe” to the folder ”c:\google_webapp”. Unfortunately I have only a german Windows version on hand, but I hope that you will find the appropriate folder in your home directory.
Also, copy “mozcrt19.dll” from the Firefox installation directory to the same directory.
4. Edit the file “application.ini” and remove “GRE_HOME” entry if it exists. In my case this entry was not there.
5. Create the folder “xulrunner” in the staging directory and copy the contents of the Firefox installation folder to the xulrunner folder:
6. Create the folder “webapp” in the staging directory and copy the webapp folder of our google application to this new created folder:
7. Copy the the WebRunner extension to our Firefox installation within the staging folder:
Now we have all files in their place! This is the final folder structure:
8. Create a shortcut to the file “webrunner.exe” in the “google_webapp” folder on your desktop:
Here is what I have set for “target” (number 1) and “working directory” (number 2):
1)
C:\google_webapp\webrunner.exe -webapp "C:\google_webapp\webapp\google@webrunner.app"2)
C:\google_webapp\webapp\google@webrunner.app\stubThats all! Now you can copy the “C:\google_webapp” folder and the shortcut on the desktop to any other computer. If you should choose a different target folder for the web app (i.e. “c:\Program Files”) you must only change the paths used by the shortcut.
Please let me know if this guide was helpful!
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Thank You!
Fine!
This is indeed much better (al least for dumb old idiots like me) than the salsitasoft tutorial.
Have a fine and peaceful weekend!
Max
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Frustrating as all HELL. The screenshots in this tutorial don’t match my Firefox installation structure. A search for “webrunner.exe” on my hard drive yields nothing. I see absolutely no way to make this work.
I’m the Director of Information Technology and web app developer for a pretty decent sized company in Las Vegas, with users all over the state. I would love to have a standalone app that I can distribute to my users. Unfortunately, the support for this software is completely useless.
Moving right along…..
Are you sure you installed the WebRunner plugin for Firefox?
It should be located in
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\#####.default\extensions\webrunner\webrunner.exe
or something very similar.
Michael, have you installed the webrunner plugin?
As far as pacing webapps, I can get it work no problem, but I always get stuck with the tab bar up top, any idea why?
Hi Corey,
I had the same problem.
Please look at step 7. Are you sure that you are using the correct path? This path is different from the path mentioned in the original tutorial. It is _not_ the profile folder within the FireFox folder!
The difference is that in the folder “extensions\webrunner@…” must be a folder named “defaults”. Please check this.
Thanks, that fixed it for me! Good work!
Do you know if it is possible to package the userchrome.css in anyway whatsoever? I’d like to change the userchrome.css so the button isn’t ORANGE on the webapp which has nothing to do with orange.
Figured this one out on my own, hard to explain in the comments though, just ping me with a reply if anyone’s interested and I’ll do a writeup on my blog.
It works…
but I dont can open Firefox and my WebApp at the same time.
First if I start my WebApp and after this the FireFox, the FireFox-Browser shows me my WebApp. ??? What happend?
If I only build the WebApp with WebRunner and I start it, I can open FireFox and i can use it.
What can I do to use FireFox and my “WebApp-DesktopApplication” at the same time?
Hello,
I just created a new application from scratch with the tutorial and I did not see this problem. I noticed another small problem with missing DLL, but, this has nothing to do with your problem (I updated step 3).
Stefan
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I’ve posted a link to my example-inno-setup-script which automates this
in the support-forum.
http://getsatisfaction.com/salsita/topics/webrunner_packaging
I hope it can solve most of the confusions
Enjoy and Regards,
Bernd
Any ideas to get the absolute path of the XRE_PROFILE_PATH given in the application.ini to be relative? Since i moved the app to an thumbdrive, on every 2 of 3 pc´s in the wild another letter is assigned to the hardware and i have to edit the ini again…
Getting alot of errors on creating webapps now just that “firefox.exe has stopped working” – It’s alot of HTML5-centric websites though