[IPython-dev] browser support tests for HTML/JS features

[Brian Granger]

Chris,

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 7:39 AM, Chris Kees <cekees at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Has their been much discussion on how the IPython Notebook is going to
> support users and developers trying to debug browser and HTML/JS issues? I
> ask becauseI spent some time over the weekend fooling with some animations,
> the related HTML5, and various browsers. I find that chrome, for example,
> appears to display videos fine in some formats on HTML5 test pages but not
> in the Notebook whereas Safari and Firefox have inconsistent support as
> well.  Since the notebook is inherently dependent on browser capabilities it
> seems like a strategy for differentiating between browser issues (i.e. those
> that need to be pushed back to Google/Apple/Mozilla) and IPython Notebook
> issues might be worthwhile.

We really are at the mercy of the browsers when it comes to HTML5
support.  We have followed the parts of HTML5 that affect all
notebooks (flexible box model + WebSockets) but HTML5 has many
additional features we have not tracked.  But I have no idea why
somethings would display fine in a test page but not in the notebook.
It could have to do with the fact that the HTML code generated by the
HTML object is dynamically inserted into the DOM.  Maybe some types of
HTML5 features need to be static on the page?  I will have to think
about how we could get around that.

> If you're interested in the video and image display tests, I made a public
> repository of some simple notebooks
> at https://github.com/erdc-cm/proteus-notebooks. Most of these will not run
> for most of you because they require either our PDE code Proteus and/or a
> package for conservation laws called PyClaw. The one that may be of general
> interest is display_test.ipynb. It brings in various image and animation
> files in what I think is proper HTML5 via IPython.core.display.HTML.
> Somebody handy with matplotlib could easily remove the dependency on the
> files and generate the images and animations inline.

Oh, great!  Thanks for putting this up and playing around with these
things.  We might want to pull some of the generic ones into the
IPython examples directory.

Cheers,

Brian

> Cheers,
> Chris
>
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-- 
Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com