I have been using Atlassian Confluence for some time as a documentation tool.
I recently tried looking at the documentation using the inbuilt Chrome browser on a 7" tablet.
To my surprise I found that the left hand navigation tree/menu was completely absent meaning that users cannot navigate past the first page.
I cannot find any way around this and I am hoping for suggestions as to how to make the documentation usable on mobile devices.
The only way to get the side navigation bar to display is to tap on the dropdown menu on the top right side of the Chrome browser and select 'Request Desktop Site'.
This is not really very satisfactory for users trying to read the documentation however as they will not even be aware that a left hand navigation menu exists and still less likely to know how to request the desktop site.
Not really a very satisfactory answer but thought I would put what I had found here in case it is useful for somebody.
I have a website that I've just created that has a jquery-ui slider bar link removed
The slider bar doesn't seems to work properly on my phone which is an android - it could affect other mobile browsers too.
Is there a way of fixing this?
Thanks
I've just had a look on my phone and it also doesn't work. However, I have noticed in the past that other JavaScript items (on other sites) also don't work, so I don't think it's a specific problem with your site.
In terms of a workaround, you could check the viewer's user agent and display a different selection method if they're on a phone.
Sorry that I don't have a example code for you to see. My question is that I have 8 image buttons for my menu and I need to know how to make the image buttons show and not show.
Meaning When you go to the menu on Android it shows 7 buttons and hides the 1 button that's for iOS and when your on the iOS it shows all 8 image buttons. I have search on Google for two days now still lost.
I have one solution for menu buttons: Try this AwesomeMenu link.
You will have to make your own modification according to your requirement.
If you're writing a web app and you need to know if the app is being accessed on an Android device or an iOS device, you should look at the user agent string.
Here's a list of iOS devices and their user agent strings: http://www.enterpriseios.com/wiki/UserAgent (First hit on Google, can't speak for the accuracy).
Here's one for Android devices: http://www.gtrifonov.com/2011/04/15/google-android-user-agent-strings-2/ (again, no idea how accurate; do your own research to be sure).
You just have to look at navigator.userAgent in your JavaScript and figure out what device the user is using. That's a start, anyway. (You'll also want to look at the iOS web app documentation to see Apple's specific meta tags and stuff to make your web app work nicely on iOS, and I'm sure Android has something similar).
I am very impressed with the stock Android 3.* Gmail app and I would like to find out how it's done.
The specifics of what I want to learn from the GMAIL app are:
How the list fragment of the various inbox/folders are styled
How the interaction beween the inbox/folder and the email list
How the tapping on the email item will hide the inbox/folders and display the email content, and the animation involved
How the action bars, context menu and other menus get displayed, controller and event handled.
Do you know any app -- which source is open for ppl to learn -- that come close to the Gmail app?
Afaik there is no Honeycomb source and the gmail app is closed source which is just pre installed on all official android devices.
There is no way to get the source code or the layouts of the Gmail Application.
My tip: search for an open source application that has similar features/behaviors and check the code there.
We have a website that offers an e-mail service. We would like to create a fully fledged app for this but cannot afford this right now. In the mean time it would be great if we could give users an icon on their phones that will take them to a page formatted for mobile on the internet. So what I'd like to know is how can we get an icon on an android users phone that will simply launch a web link in a browser- does this have to be an app, is there an easier way, or am I over estimating how complicated it would be to make this as an app anyway?
Thanks in advance
Create a new Android project (after following the SDK installation steps provided at http://developer.android.com)
on the directory /res/drawable-*dpi you have the laucher icons. Modify all of them.
In the main activity, delete all inside the onCreate method an put this:
String url = "http://www.YOUR-URL.com";
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
i.setData(Uri.parse(url));
startActivity(i);
This will open the android browser with the URL provided.
I have done projects like this in the past, it is very simple. You need to create a website formatted for a smaller screen. Once you do this, building an android app that displays your website inside it is simple. You can even remove all of the android browser toolbars so it appears as if your website is a real android application. Google android webviews, this will point you in the right direction.
See here for what's probably the best instruction page on how to do exactly that:
http://intelnav.50webs.com/app_project.html
It's based on a Webview, that is it opens the page and does all the navigation in the app window, not in the default browser. So if you want to open it in the browser, you have to use Intent, as said in previous answers.
My 2 pennies worth, I think it's better in the app window unless you really want complex navigation with the possibility of opening additional tabs, windows and so on. The drawback with the external browser is that, as far as I could see, there's no way to tell if the page is already open in the browser so you'll launch a different copy (in a new tab) every time. If the user doesn't close the tab at the end, they usually don't, it can become quite annoying. Besides, within an app you'll probably have somewhat better possibilities for ads should you ever want them.
Versus a simple home-screen bookmark, as others pointed out, it's simpler and more convenient for end users to just download an app from an online store (usually Google Play). It's what they're used to do. And they do have a lot of additional info available, like what it does, what others say about it, screen shots (if you provide some for them but you should). Plus a way to comment / complain themselves. It's a different thing. Technically it may not make a lot of sense but from a simple user's perspective it's clearly better IMO.
One way is to bookmark the site and then add it to your home screen. Source
It seems to me like you need a mobile version of your web page. Do you have that already? Once you have your mobile website (ie. website optimized for mobile devices), you could create a simple application with only one WebView. All content would be fetched from your site and displayed inside a webview. This is trivial to make, however, making an entire mobile website will take some time.
Note that you do not HAVE TO have a mobile website, you could pack you existing website into a WebView, but this would lower user experience.
you would build an app that launches a browser intent linking to your website, or a custom WebView to launch your website in full screen without any navigation bar etc..
The only easier way is to put instructions on your site (directly, or as a contextual pop-up) on how to add the bookmark as an icon on your home screen. This can be slightly more complicated on Android, and depends on the browser. A simpler option for your potential users is to provide a wrapper app via the Marketplace.
It is not overly complicated to create a simple wrapper Android app in Java that launches the browser, using Intents. The essential browser launch code is basically this:
Uri uriUrl = Uri.parse("http://www.yourwebpage.com");
Intent launchBrowser = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uriUrl);
startActivity(launchBrowser);
A more detailed tutorial for creating this is available here:
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android/launch-android-browser/
Try this kick-start mobile device app for showing websites. Written with cordova for platforms like android, ios, browser and so on: https://github.com/jetedonner/ch.kimhauser.cordova.kickstartwebsite (GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.kimhauser.cordova.kickstartwebsite, Website: http://kimhauser.ch/index.php/projects/cordova-phonegap/kick-start-website)