Pack an HTML5 app and deploy it on the desktop

Question

I have read tons of articles and stackoverflow questions but I seem not get it to work.

I want to distribute some product information for a customer which will be send out on a CD or USB stick. Back in the days I did it with Flash. Because flash could compile into a EXE called Flash projector and could run my Flash content without installation.

Now I want to give HTML5 a spin. And I need a way to pack everything on a CD an make it run everywhere without installation.

I heard something that I could compile chromium and embed it in a c++ application. (http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/) I could use QT with QtWebkit. (http://developer.qt.nokia.com/doc/qt-4.8/qtwebkit.html) I could compile Webkit and embed it in a c++ application... (http://www.webkit.org/)

The examples are to big and I do not have any C++ skills =(

Then there are projects like mozilla chromeless (http://mozillalabs.com/chromeless) (and berkelium (https://github.com/sirikata/berkelium)

With chromeless my JQuery Javascript did not work and Berkelium... I did not get to compile...

I have no budget for http://www.appcelerator.com/ or other paid/commercial options... (also Flash/Air and Silverlight are not an option). Because Content should also be deployed on the web server without the use of plugins ...

I do not need any access to the OS. What I want have my Jquery/Backbone app which consumes JSON files to run in a desktop client without installation.

So no browser adressbar just pickup the index.html and everything else is handled by the app... Something like Fullscreen and Close would be nice...

Unfortunately I cannot rely on the installed browser of the "customers OS" because the target group is to large and I expect alot of old browsers.

Can anyone give me instruction how to compile "easily" an app which makes my web app stuff running on the desktop from CD without security warnings, etc?

Or are there any pre-compiled packeges that I could use?

Answer 1

Node-webkit combines the Chromium (Chrome) browser with Node.js. As I understand it, you don't need the extra APIs, but you don't need to use them, simply creating a really short json file and zipping up your project is enough, and you can even combine everything into a single executable. The project provides binaries, so no compiling needed.

https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit