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WebSite on a cd

I

INB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2008
4
0
Is it possible to put a website onto a dvd and include a browser on that disk with which a person viewing the disk would be using taht browser to do so.

I am trying to make such a web site disk that will run on both PC's and Mac's.

I have several questions about doing this but first need to know about the browser issue. I am trying to avoid rendering problems that would occur if the person's native browser came up to view the index.html. I would in short just like to have everyone use the same browser by amking everything open from the one that's on the disk. I guess this would exclude internet exploer and safari since those use system resources. Is there a browser that is self contained?

Thanks in advance. I am dead in the water until I can find answer to this question.

INB;)
 
vandozza

vandozza

macrumors 6502a
Jun 14, 2006
612
0
Australia
AFAIK you can run Firefox portable from a CD/DVD.

Firefox comes in both Win/OSX/Linux flavours, but I havn't looked into if all of them can run from CD/DVD. Maybe have a look at the link above.

It would probably be easier to use the native browser? And try and minimise rendering issues by writing solid code? Althought this means at time making compromises.

Good luck!

edit - also i have seen plenty of people run firefox on OSX from a disk image by mistake. so maybe this suggests that firefox doesn't need write access to run from it's location properly?
 
angelwatt

angelwatt

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
7,852
9
USA
You're better off writing good HTML and not trying to force the user to use a specific browser. Each operating system has file associations with certain file types. So, when a person opens a .html file it'll open with whatever application the person has associated with that file. You won't be able to override this, and if you could, you'd very likely piss off the user.

Running a site from CD can work OK depending on if it's just HTML/CSS/JavaScript or if you need dynamic creation using PHP or MySQL. I've seen some stuff that can do the dynamic stuff, but tends to cost money.

Using the portable Firefox like suggested would work, but it would expect the user to know they need to open it rather than going straight to the HTML files. I'm not sure how you're delivering these CDs and what type of instructions they're getting.
 
gazfocus

gazfocus

macrumors 68000
Jan 3, 2008
1,650
0
Liverpool, UK
angelwatt said:
Running a site from CD can work OK depending on if it's just HTML/CSS/JavaScript or if you need dynamic creation using PHP or MySQL. I've seen some stuff that can do the dynamic stuff, but tends to cost money.
Click to expand...

There is a free product available for PHP and MySQL called Server2Go that can run off a CD, but I agree with what angelwatt said. You'd be better off writing good code that will work across all browsers, rather than trying to force a specific browser onto people.
 
grapes911

grapes911

Moderator emeritus
Jul 28, 2003
6,995
10
Citizens Bank Park
angelwatt said:
You're better off writing good HTML and not trying to force the user to use a specific browser.
Click to expand...

gazfocus said:
but I agree with what angelwatt said. You'd be better off writing good code that will work across all browsers, rather than trying to force a specific browser onto people.
Click to expand...

I agree too. If your sites aren't looking good across all major browsers then you still have work to do. IE6/7 and FireFox are the minimum, but IE5, Safari, and Opera are used by a lot of people too. Cross browser compatibility is just one of many things that separate the best professionals from the wannabes.
 
I

INB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2008
4
0
Thanks so much to each of you.

I will check out if Firefox will run from cd with out any config files needing to be written, or cache also.

My code isn't great, but it works well in all browsers except the activex stuff...which only works in IE. That is not soemthing that can be overcome , right?

See site at http://www.classicalmusicproject.com if somebody has time. Please tell me if things rendered okay, and which browser you used.

Even with perfect code, I notice that pages render differently with different browsers. I am just trying to force people to use the one on the cd so that I can write code that renders pages as well as can be accomplished for that particular browser.

So, please go to above web site and tell me what you see.

thanks, guys, appreciated.

INB;)
 
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