8b3a5c3a1e
* workflows: Rename "CI" to "Release" Rename this to make space for a separate "CI" workflow that will run continuous integration and testing jobs for commits and PRs. * workflows: add CI workflow for unit tests and support running locally * Load qunit package from npm, this is the start of a larger transition. ref at https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/issues/554. * Update QUnit from 2.3 to 2.13. * Use Karma for the running of unit tests (instead of Nightwatch). While it was possible to use a fake "UI" test to open the QUnit web page with Nightwatch, this had numerous limitations: - relies on fragile and unsupported DOM scraping to collect test results, which breaks between framework versions. ref https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/pull/660. - severely limits debugging information for failing tests. - cannot easily be reproduced or debugged locally from the command-line as the Nightwatch config was pinned to Sauce Labs, and creating a local configuration is not easy because Nightwatch has a hard requirement for installing and running a WebDriver server. People usually do not have this installed and it's non-trivial to set up and keep working in the long term, and across multiple different software projects. - cannot easily be run in a secure container separate from your personal computer, thus putting personal data at risk. - lacks wider integration and plugins to enrich unit testing, such as test coverage reports. Using Karma means: - We can run 'npm test' locally during development and have it automatically run the tests in headless Firefox and Chrome and report back, all from the command-line. - The same exact same stack is also used in CI with SauceLabs for additional browser coverage (same as before). - It has no external dependencies other than the plain web browser itself. This means if you have a development container (e.g. based on Docker) that has Node.js + Firefox + Chromium, you can run the tests there without exposing anything from your personal computer, besides the current directory. <https://timotijhof.net/posts/2019/protect-yourself-from-npm/> - In a future change, we can plug in karma-coverage to generate a test coverage report, to submit to Codecov or Coveralls. ref https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/issues/528. * I have pinned the version of 'http-server' and 'nightwatch' in package.json so that these don't silently upgrade in a way that may introduce security issues or drop compatibility for the environment we currently support. Fixes https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/issues/653. * Re-enable unit and UI tests in latest Edge The tests were disabled after https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/pull/499 due to an issue with the Edge version that was the default "edge" on SauceLabs in May 2019 (not sure which version that was, the last pre-Chromium Edge version was 44, which was passing, so perhaps SauceLabs defaulted to a beta release, or used a much older version like 15-18?) Now that Edge uses Chromium, try re-enabling the tests. Fixes https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/issues/502.
Kiwix JS
Kiwix is an offline Wikipedia viewer. See the official site: https://www.kiwix.org/
This is a browser extension developed in HTML5/Javascript.
You can search among the article titles, and read any of them without any Internet access. All the content of Wikipedia is inside your device (including the images). It might also work with other content in the OpenZIM format: https://wiki.openzim.org/wiki/OpenZIM , but has been only tested on the Mediawiki-based (Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, etc) and StackExchange ZIM files.
If your Internet access is expensive/rare/slow/unreliable/watched/censored, you still can browse this amazing repository of knowledge and culture.
Usage
It uses ZIM files that you can download from https://download.kiwix.org/zim/
You have to download them separately, store them in your filesystem, and manually select them after starting the application. It is unfortunately not technically possible to "remember" the selected ZIM file and open it automatically (the browsers refuse that for security reasons).
Some technical details
Technically, after reading an article from a ZIM file, there is a need to "inject" the dependencies (images, css, etc). For compatibility reasons, there are several ways to do it :
- the "jQuery" mode parses the DOM to find the HTML tags of these dependencies and modifies them to put the Base64 content in it. It is compatible with any browser. It works well on Mediawiki-based content but can miss some dependencies on some contents
- the "ServiceWorker" mode uses a Service Worker to catch any HTTP request the page would send and reply with content read from the ZIM file. It is a generic and much cleaner way than jQuery mode, but it does not work on all browsers. And ServiceWorkers are currently disabled by Mozilla in Firefox extensions.
Compatibility
This is written in HTML/javascript so it should work on many recent browser engines.
Officially supported platforms
- Mozilla Firefox >=45 (as an extension : https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/kiwix-offline/)
- Google Chrome (or Chromium) >=58 (as an extension : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwix/donaljnlmapmngakoipdmehbfcioahhk)
- Firefox OS >=1.2 (needs to be installed manually on the device with WebIDE)
- Microsoft Edge (Chromium) >=80 (as an add-on : https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/kiwix/jlepddlenlljlnnhjinfaciabanbnjbp)
- Universal Windows Platform (UWP) >=10.0.10240 (as an HTML/JS application : see https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js-windows/)
- Ubuntu Touch (as an application : https://open.uappexplorer.com/app/kiwix)
Deprecated platforms
These platforms are deprecated. We still partially test against them, and we'll try to keep compatibility as long as it's not too complicated :
- Microsoft Edge Legacy >=40 (needs to run a local copy of the source code)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 (needs to run a local copy of the source code)
License
This application is released under the GPL v3 license. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ or the included LICENSE-GPLv3.txt file The source code can be found at https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js
Unit tests
Unit tests can be run by opening tests/index.html file in Firefox, Edge, or Chromium/Chrome.
Public releases and nightly builds
The browser extensions are distributed through the stores of each vendor (see links above). But the packages are also saved in https://download.kiwix.org/release/browsers/ if necessary.
Some nightly builds are generated, and should only be used for testing purpose: https://download.kiwix.org/nightly/
Previous versions
The first versions of this application were originally part of the Evopedia project: http://www.evopedia.info (now discontinued). There was a "articles nearby" feature, that was able to find articles around your location. It has been deleted from the source code with everything related to Evopedia (but still in git history in versions<=2.0.0) These first versions were targeting Firefox OS (now discontinued too: we're not lucky ;-) ). Some Phonegap/Cordova port was started but never finished (see in git history in versions<=2.0.0).
See CHANGELOG.md for the detail of previous versions.