A Web Browser for the modern application By Dan Whitcomb 2016
Monarch is the product of a senior research project by Dan Whitcomb '16 at Dartmouth College for the computer science major. It came out of the recognition that web applications require a different type of experience than basic web pages. Monarch allows any web page to be opened as a desktop application on Mac OS X 10.9+. Apps are accompanied by custom desktop icons, separate windows, and a customizable menu system.
Monarch has only been tested thoroughly on Mac OS 10.10, but should be stable onother recent versions of Mac OS X. Just open the app bundle to run
Download GYP and run the setup from the root dir
$ python setup.py install
Download and install Ninja, the required build system.
Set the generators for the ninja build:
$ export GYP_GENERATORS=ninja
If you want to make the Xcode project, then this as well:
$ export GYP_GENERATORS=xcode-ninja, $GYP_GENERATORS
Finally, create the build files from the Monarch root directory:
$ cd src/build
$ ./gyp_chromium
The -C option makes ninja switch directories before doing anything. GYP puts the build files for both Debug and Release in their respective out/ directory. All built files will be in its respective directory. Doing an initial build can take hours. Don't try unless you really want to commit that time.
Run from project root:
$ ninja -C out/Debug chrome
Run from project root:
$ ninja -C out/Release chrome
There are three ways to open a page in an app bundle form.
- Navigate to the desired page, then either right click somewhere on the page, or select 'View' in Monarch's menu bar. Then on either menu, select 'Enter App Mode'. The current tab you are on will close and the app will open with that tab's page: sessions are not preserved when opening in app mode, so you will lose any current data on the page
- You can open an app by typing the URL into the navigation bar. If it is recognized as a valid URL, there should also be an option to open that URL as an App, and there will be an icon next to the URL that says 'App'. Selecting this option will launch that URL in an app.
You can get a bundle that was created on Mac OS 10.10 here. If you want to take the time, the accompanying paper justifiying and explaining the work can be found there.
This is distributed under the FreeBSD License, see LICENSE file in release directory for more information
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