I have a server hosting a website that is HTML5 compatible. I can access the site from my android phone via chrome just fine but i don't want the app to look as if its running within a chrome browser. I want it to look like a stand alone application.
I've taken a peak at Cordova, and PhoneGap but it just feels like what i'm trying to do should be much simpler and without need of a framework so to speak.
How can i package my website for delivery to android/ios so it runs without look like it is inside the native browser?
Thanks!
On Android there is Progressive Web Apps
https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/
Other than that you'll have to use a framework to make real apps like the one you mentioned.
Related
I am having mobile compatible website, it is highly responsive and do all what I need in mobile.
I just like to have an android/ios application, either it can represent my website as container.
Do we have any tool for the same. Is there any way to achieve it, as I do not want to use any mobile hardware like camera, geolocation and any other.
If any container of android or ios can provide a simple interface by opening my site in it, it will be a great option.
Kindly share your view on the same.
Have a look at this article about layouts.
A mobile application provides a different user experience than a mobile website. In your case if you don't want to use the mobile version of your site in the browser, then you need to create an application with a native UI.
For Android:
In my opinion, you should consider using the Empty Activity template from Android Studio to add a WebView inside it that will point to your website.
For iOS:
Seems like iOS Dev kit has the same kind of view.
For Windows Universal Apps:
Their Dev Kit has it as well.
Alternative:
If you feel more comfortable with web technologies, you can consider using Apache Cordova to build a mobile app from web sources.
Conclusion
All the native solutions presented are not that hard to implement (Less than a few hours), they just need you to play a little bit around with the native developing.
Cordova, the web-to-mobile solution, would also need you to play around with it.
Happy mobile developing !
I want to develop an application which works both in a regular browser and as an Android app. Both seem suitable but would I be right in saying if I went with Phone Gap, deploying the same html content as a regular, server hosted website is not trivial and would require modification? Also, are multi page applications not desirable in a Phone Gap wrapper?
Are there any alternatives I should consider? I'm surprised someone hasn't already written an Android wrapper with all the hardware access wiring done already. Or have they?
There are few things you should know,
If you are going to publish your app also on iOS, you can't use server hosted website for your app.
All of your basic functionality must stand on your app assets, is one of the iOS guidelines, and its also make-sense for best ui performance (both iOS & Android).
Use server-side wisely, when you want to fetch data which have to be up-to-date.
there are some new mobile browser features which will be available in the future, that allow your website to use the device hardware functions:
Device API on W3C
Good luck dude ;)
You can try with jquery mobile framework:
http://www.jquerymobile.com
It is jquery based framework for developing web apps that works on standard web and on multiple mobile devices (with cordova)
I'm trying to make an in-browser web appliction for mobile phones. We started with an Android system, because it was the most open for development.
Now I want to make it for all the other OS's too, and I've heard that we can make a website into an app. We saw this live on a IPad and a Android tablet.
If you open it on your tablet they ask "Would you make an app from this website?". If you do this them make a kind of link to you website. What google maps does is that they ask for permission to get your GPS data. We want to do the same with Bluetooth.
My question now is, does anybody know a good example where I can take a look how to do it?
Also I want to know if its possible to do it all in HTML, or do I need a webview layer above it?
It looks like you are asking for Apache PhoneGap
PhoneGap is a mobile development framework produced by Nitobi, purchased by Adobe Systems. It enables software programmers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3, instead of device-specific languages such as Objective-C
or other Multiple phone web-based application framework
What's the intent behind a framework like Dojo or jQuery Mobile in the context of developing a cross-platform app?
I want to rapidly prototype a mobile app GUI that includes a schedule/calendar. In this case, would I use Dojo instead of just PhoneGap because I would want to also have a web browser based app that goes alone with my mobile app?
Mobile JavaScript frameworks like those provided by Dojo or jQuery theoretically allow you to
write mobile browser independent client side code for web based applications. In other words, you as the developer do not need to be concerned with writing specific code for each mobile browser.
Dojo (or other JS mobile toolkit) and PhoneGap are generally complimentary. PhoneGap is for access to native device services which aren't yet reflected to the browser, like camera or telco access. Dojo and the other toolkits generally let you create mobile-style UIs (may also run on Desktop browser, but would look like a phone) and handle things like touch and scroll gestures. And, as Peter says, cross-browser issues are also handled for you.
Even after searching PhoneGap's website and their support group, I still cannot find an answer to my question:
Currently, I'm planning on developing an application that should exists as a pure HTML5 application, being able to run in any modern browser (Google Chrome, Safari, etc.) as well as on Android/iPad as native mobile applications.
So my question is:
Is it possible to use the same code base to develop both pure HTML5 applications as well as native mobile applications with PhoneGap?
PhoneGap is in effect a runtime environment for HTML, javascript, and any CSS that may accompany your code. So in short:
Yes, but it is recommended that you have some knowledge of Objective-C if you want to develop any iPhone app with extended functionality. If you have the right dimensions/proportions for the code there is no reason why you cannot simply copy that code into PhoneGap and compile it.
See, the support for #HTML5 varies from browser to browser, and varies a lot from a desktop browser to mobile browser. If one has to convert web-portal to a mobile application that can easily be done through Phonegap, you can refer to this link also. https://build.phonegap.com/ It worked fine for me.
Now lets come to Phonegap, what phonegap does is it has created wrapper through javascript that calls the native apis. Now to show content they use WebView object which renders your html5 page in your app. And you can create your own wrappers too. Not that much difficult.
So if your app is only a web based portal, that does not need much native access, you can easily reuse one codebase make #cross-platform apps using Phonegap. Else you need to go for hybrid apps.