Using eConnect in a Browser
eConnect runs in a browser with nothing installed. Go to your server's address, sign in, and you have the same application the desktop client provides — the same modules, the same queries, the same dashboards, the same assistant.
This is new in version 11, and it removes the two things that used to stand between somebody and their data: a Windows machine, and an install.
What you need
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Any — Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS |
| Browser | Chrome or Edge 107+, Firefox 104+, Safari 16+ |
| Connection | HTTPS, with a certificate your browser trusts |
Video is the one difference
The browser shows cameras as automatically refreshing still images rather than as video. Live and recorded playback need the desktop client.
The refresh rate is not fixed. eConnect measures how quickly each camera answers and settles at the fastest rate that camera can sustain — around one image per second for a responsive camera, longer for a slower one, up to about ten seconds. A camera that stops answering is retried with increasing gaps rather than being given up on.
For searching, analysis, dashboards, cases, subjects, plates and the assistant, the browser is fully equivalent. For watching footage, it is not, and no setting changes that.
Installing it as an app
Browsers can install eConnect as an application window — no address bar, its own icon, its own taskbar entry. This is worth doing for one concrete reason: pop-out windows lose their address bar too.
A pop-out opened from an ordinary browser tab always carries a read-only address bar that the page cannot remove. Opened from an installed app window, the same pop-out has none, which reclaims the space and makes a detached view look like part of the application rather than a browser window.
Losing the address bar also loses its back and forward buttons, so the installed window carries its own back and forward controls in the title bar. They move through eConnect the way the browser's would, which matters when you have drilled several levels into a grid and want to retrace a step.
When your server is reachable over a trusted HTTPS connection and eConnect is not already installed, an Install app button appears in the title bar, and you are offered the same thing the first time you open a pop-out. Installing takes one click. Ignoring it costs you nothing except the address bar.
Installation is available in Chromium-based browsers — Chrome and Edge. Firefox and Safari run eConnect perfectly well but do not offer the app window.
Installing requires a connection the browser fully trusts. With an untrusted self-signed certificate the app window will not open at all — the certificate warning blocks it. If your server uses a self-signed certificate, have it trusted on the machine, or ask your administrator for a certificate the browser accepts.
Rolling it out across a fleet
Administrators can have Edge or Chrome install eConnect automatically on managed machines, launching in a window rather than a tab, via browser policy. No configuration is needed in eConnect itself. Your administrator will know this as the browser's web-app force-install policy.
Staying current
The browser client notices when a new version has been deployed underneath it and prompts you to reload. Take the prompt when it appears — continuing on an old bundle against an updated server is the most common cause of odd behaviour that nobody else can reproduce.
Signing in
The same as the desktop client, minus choosing a server — the address you visited is the server. See Signing In.