Offcial support for the Chrome browser for accessing LabVIEW remote panels

[altenbach]

As mentioned here, Chrome is now the dominant web browser worldwide, but acessing remote front panels using Chrome is still not officially supported by NI (more details and links are in the quoted thread). 

While there are some hints that several users had success back in 2010, I was not successful so far.

IDEA: There needs to be official NI support for the dominant browser and NI should invest some effort to get this working seamlessly.

[Andi_S]

Your statistics might be valid for the US but not for the whole world. If NI wants to support the "dominant" browser they have to support IE, Firefox AND Chrome.

Here is the statistics for Germany:

[altenbach]

> Your statistics might ...

It is not my statistic. I provide a link to the source in the quoted thread. And yes, the Germans (together with Mongolia, Iran, Central Africa and a few others are intersting outliers. :D)

Also if you look at the graph further down on the linked page, Chrome is the only one still on a steep upslope while IE and FF are in a downward spiral. So things will most likely shift even more to Chrome in the future (...except maybe in Germany ...).

> If NI wants to support the "dominant" browser they have to support IE, Firefox AND Chrome.

They already officially support Firefox and IE. So, yes, the point of this idea is to add Chrome to the list.

[Jeff-P]

Hi altenbach,

I just tried this with LabVIEW 2013 and the latest version of Chrome and I had no problems viewing a remote panel. Did you have trouble using it with chrome? 

I understand that the original idea is about official support, and I am not trying to address that with this post, I just want to know if it is currently failing for you.

Thanks,

Jeff Peacock 

Product Support Engineer | LabVIEW R&D | National Instruments 

[altenbach]

Thanks Jeff,

It is possible that a minor setting is missing in my case, but here's what I get if I try to open in Chrome vs. IE.

Maybe somebody can point me in the right direction. In any case, the plugin troubleshooting web page should also describe what to do if things don't work in Chrome. (I never had Firefox installed).

[altenbach]

The final analysis is that chrome works as long as firefox is installed as well. If (as in my cases!!!) only IE and Chrome is installed, LabVIEW fails to add the firefox extension that Chrome uses.

In summary it is an issue with the LabVIEW installer that can be fixed and now has CAR 425753. It is not a problem with Chrome per se.

I wonder if "LabVIEW remote panels" could be be offered as an extension in the chrome web store. This would make installation a snap, even if chrome is installed after LabVIEW. If somebody would try to view panels without it, Chrome could offer to install it painlessly on the spot. (should this be a new idea???).

Ultimately, it would be cool for this to work even on e.g. Chrome for Android, but that might be a bit harder....(another potential new idea). 😄

[Jeff-P]

As an additional note for those who find that the plugin is not installing on chrome (since firefox is not present), you can manually copy the plugin to the chrome plugin directory and it will work. The steps for that are detailed in the KB linked above.

Thanks,

Jeff Peacock 

Product Support Engineer | LabVIEW R&D | National Instruments 

[G-Money]

altenbach,

If the issue was fixed in 2013 SP1 or 2014 where the plugin wasn't installed in the correct Chrome folder, would you consider it "officially" supported? Chrome is already listed on the supported browsers list (http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/151BE12C055F57CE86257043006CB4B3#Windows) but I understand that this bug is not good. If this was fixed then Chrome would work with Remote Front Panels without Firefox needing to be installed.

Grant

[altenbach]

Yes if it would work automatically after installing LabVIEW (or the run time) on a system only having IE and Chrome, I would be happy with the solution.