Develop Reference

HTML5 game on Android - Audio and Video problems

I have searched high and low for several days for this problem and I just can't figure it out, hopefully someone else has solved this.
The problem is simple, I have created a web-based game using mainly createjs, preloadjs, and soundjs. The plan was to load the content inside a UIWebView on iOS and WebView on Android to create the two apps.
The problem occurs on Android 4.4 and lower. Neither the videos or the sounds are playing. I'm starting with the simplest scenario; I have an image on a web page, attached a preloaded sound to play onclick;
init:
createjs.Sound.registerSound("sounds/sound_must_be_on.mp3", "soundOn");
$('.btn.sound').click(soundMustBeOn);
onclick listener:
function soundMustBeOn() {
createjs.Sound.setMute(false);
createjs.Sound.setVolume(1);
createjs.Sound.play("soundOn");
}
This works perfect on all modern desktop browsers, iOS and Android 5.x and higher. But on Android 4.4 (on a WebView) it just crashes. What have I missed? I have tried Cordova, Phonegap, SoundJS CordovaAudioPlugin, file:// paths, resources outside the android_asset folder, and plenty of other things. My quess is that I have used Phonegap totally wrong, I could really use a "for dummies" example.

Solved it.
I did what I didn't want to do, but I guess it had to be done. I encapsulated my entire web application within Cordova/Phonegap, downloaded and added the CordovaAudioPlugin.js file from SoundJS and simply registered the plugin as others have already done (also updated the file path)
createjs.Sound.registerPlugins([createjs.CordovaAudioPlugin]);
createjs.Sound.registerSound("/android_asset/www/sounds/sound_must_be_on.mp3", "soundOn");

Android WebView accessibility in KitKat

I'm having some trouble getting TalkBack to work with a web view (testing with a Nexus 5 on Android 4.4.2). I read that TalkBack support was added to web views around the release of Android JellyBean by checking a preference titled "Enhance Web Accessibility." I can't for the life of me find this preference in the system settings.
Focusing on the web view in our application simply reads "WebView" and provides no other options. I've made sure and called getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true); on the web view.
Was TalkBack support for web views removed in KitKat? If not, what am I missing here?

On 4.4, you need to have TalkBack/Explore by Touch enabled on the first run of your application. If you enabled it after that, it never seems to work. I figured this out by trial and error. I suspect scripts are being injected into your app/WebView on first launch to support it.
As an alternative, you could manually inject the ChromeVox scripts into your WebView and enable accessibility that way. Check out how the PhoneGap plugin does it - https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-mobile-accessibility

bluestacks stuck on loading channels

Bluestacks stuck up on loading channel with a circle in the middle...
so far I had uninstalled and re-installed bluestacks several times but ended with the same issue.
I am using fastest internet connection in my pc using LAN / Wifi.

i found the solution , it seems that blue stacks trying to connect to some kind of store and he couldn't, i fix it up by running an app called psiphone 3 , its a free vpn app , after u run it u will notice that nothing change and the loading page still appear just wait for 5 minutes and the store list will appear after this try to download any launcher u want , and then ur problem will be solved
sorry bad english.

I've got the same issue and it looked like that the application 'com.bluestacks.gamepophome' is missing or corrupt. You can check the log file 'C:\ProgramData\Bluestacks\GameManager.log'.
The solution I applied is to use a different Launcher. I used ADW Launcher as an replacement. The benefit is that I can use more of the default Android apps as well.

If you are facing constant issues while running Bluestacks i.e Bluestacks Loading Screen problem then there's no need to worry anymore you can easily fix the issue by trying the following steps :
1 - Install Latest Bluestacks App player and install all additional software's required by bluestacks for proper operation
2 - Give Users Account Full Control Access
For more details and step by step guide visit here :
http://www.rushinformation.com/bluestacks-loading-problem-screen-fix/

It was stuck and blinking for me. I resolved it by:
Go to Settings > Apps > All Apps
Select GamePopMain
Force Stop and Clear Data
And voila - it started working again

I had the same issue and what I figured is the GamePopMain is a launcher for BlueStacks. It has some issue in the Mac version for sure and on windows may have them as well. Install any other launcher and you will stop getting crashes and will be able to use it with out problems.

Custom Android MMS/SMS application from source code?

Okay here's the deal:
I want to download the full source of the MMS/SMS application that ships with Android phones. I want to be able to modify it, and add a little custom functionality to it.
I am developing using Eclipse, and I'm on Windows 7. I have noticed that there is now a Git for Windows, but I am pretty lost in it and not sure how to integrate everything with Eclipse.
Basically, I want to just get it to the point where I have all the source code visible in Eclipse and be able to see the app run JUST like the built-in texting/MMS app that is already on my phone. Then I'll know that I can modify it and proceed.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

There's a mirror of the SMS/MMS app on GitHub here. Just import that to Eclipse and customise away.

Unless you want to customize and use it only on your own phone (without publishing), this is not a good idea. This is because it uses classes that are hidden from the sdk. By default you won't even be able to build the apk via eclipse, but there is a way. The reason why this is a bad idea is that the hidden apis are not guaranteed to remain the same through different api-levels and your app can stop working with the next android update, and might also not work on previous api-levels. In-fact your app might not even work on selected phones running the same api-level.

Loading URL in WebView for Android 3.1 fails on device but works on emulator

I'm trying to load the following URL into a webview: index.html?name
This works fine on Android 2.2 device and emulator, as well as Android 3.1 emulator. However, when I load the app up on my Android 3.1 galaxy tab, I am met with an error:
Webpage not available
The webpage at file:///android_asset/index.html?name might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
Seems like it's not registering that it's a local asset and is trying to access the web for it. Any idea why this is happening, and only on the physical 3.1 device? If I try to load just index.html then it works fine on everything. I doubt it, but could it have something to do with the question mark?
Thanks in advance.

I had the same issue but there's a workaround...
Change ?name to #name instead and it will work, since named anchors are supported by Android. You can then use JavaScript like the following to detect the anchor and act upon it:
if (window.location.href.search('#name') > 0)
{
// Do something
}

I think you've answered your own question. Over HTTP, the '?' in a URL is used to separate URL parameters from the main URL; although it's interesting that this works with file:///android_asset in the emulators, I'd hesitate to call it a bug.
If you need to pass arguments to the HTML page (perhaps for javascript to use), one option would be to use anchor syntax (e.g. file:///android_asset/index.html#name)

As per the standard, file:// URLs don't support query strings, like your ?name. So this is hardly a bug. What are you trying to accomplish in the first place? Which part of your code is supposed to process the name? If JavaScript, then load the page, then invoke some JavaScript on it via another loadUrl() call with a javascript: URL.