I am planning to build a survey style questionnaire app that will run on android devices. I am not too keen on creating Android apps and recently came across PWA framework of Google.
Can anyone suggest if this is an ideal solution to build an offline survey style questionnaire app, the requirement is users will download a new questionnaire before going in field which would have different set of questions and choices and will take responses that could be around 100-500 per questionnaire in offline mode and they will come back to office and connect with internet and sync with central database.
My question is whether PWA can provide this offline feature and more importantly how much space is provided for a PWA to use on devices, is the space limited to couple of MB's like the Microsoft MVC solution?
Thanks,
Anurag
Regarding offline capabilities:
You can use service workers for such requirement. If you are only targeting modern devices with updated browsers, offline capabilities shouldn't be a problem.
Regarding Storage:
You can either leverage web storage API or indexedDB. In either case, you may read: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-research/ to know the limits for each. Actual answer depends on platform and browser.
If you are only targeting mobile app and can take care of app distribution you can also consider Ionic for developing a hybrid app.
http://ionicframework.com/docs/v2/
Also, check out:
https://github.com/pazguille/offline-first : Everything you need to know to create offline-first web apps.
Related
Recently I just started to learn Android Instant app. As far I research, it make me feel that it behaves like a Web App, which used to replace mobile websites.
This may be a dumb question, but I want to figure out whether Android Instant app is a Web App or not. And, any difference between both of them ?
Android Instant Apps allows Android users to run your apps instantly, without installation.
Web apps or Now most used as Progressive Web Apps are user experiences that have the reach of the web, and are: Reliable - Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions
Differenrences between Webapp and AndroidInstantApp:
Web apps have lack integration with some smartphone features like contacts,Bluetooth, flashlight etc. AIAs always have.
Web apps can be crawled and discovered by search engines. While they don’t need to be developed as fully fledged apps, they still need to
be developed as web apps that meet Google’s standards.Whereas AIAs only need to be upgraded from the already existing
native mobile app.
You can also got more info here:- Android Instant Apps
Native Android apps, without the installation
Instant Apps are Native applications.
The description says:
Native Android apps, without the installation
An evolution in app sharing and discovery, Android Instant Apps allows
Android users to run your apps instantly, without installation.
Android users experience what they love about apps—fast and beautiful
user interfaces, high performance, and great capabilities—with just a
tap.
You can see the official documentations from here.
A android instace app can be run without internet and ... not a web app :)
I'd like to know if it's a way to write a mobile application which can purchase products through OpenCart website. Here are two possible methods I can think of. Please suggest which one is better or if there is another better way:
OMF - OpenCart mobile framework. I guest it's just a theme for the open cart website. Is it possible to run this inside PhoneGap ?
OpenCart Restful API. We can build the native UI in mobile application. But if there are any limitations?
I'll appreciate if anybody who have experience to build the open cart website for the mobile application advise. Thank you so much.
I shall answer because I was working on somewhat similar project before. Your suggested solutions first.
1] Using phonegap you develop hybrid mobile apps which run on webview on respected mobile platforms. And I don't recommend this method because what it does is renders the exact website DOM in mobile's webview and it will get rejected by Apple since they won't allow this due to native design guidelines consistency. So, unless you are only targeting Android users, forget this option.
2] Building native mobile app is preferable. However I should give you a heads-up that Opencart has prewritten APIs for Orders, customers, shipping, vouchers etc but not for products. You will have to manually write it.
I can't figure out what limitations you are referring. Obviously, in a mobile app the desktop version extensions won't work. the requirement mentioned in the first line of question can certainly be meet using API with native development.
I am new to android development, I have a website that is for online shopping and I want to make an android app so the smart phone users can also access it. It will use something like PHP post/get, JSON, JavaScript to get values from server and submit forms from app. My question is after doing all these, mean HTTP Connection and all that, is there any need to make a special website for mobile device too, that will be compatible with mobile device? or no need of this, just to open it in mobile app? I have googled it but can't find something useful.
I think most of visitors will visit the normal site instead of installing a unknown app.
It's your own choose, if i have the the choice i would choose both (web and app).
I think it's important to have a user and mobile friendly website.
At least you could make your website responsive so that user have the choice whether they will install a Native app or use the 'web' app.
I've met the same question.
Apps are good-looking and functional.
But the thing is, especially in China, almost everybody around me uses "Wechat" as a daily app. The most important thing Wechat can provide is an entry. By establishing an official accounts, customers can be easily linked to your mobile website. And 1)it's way more convenience than Apps. 2)Mobile website has a less developing cost than an App. 3)With HTML5 spreading to mobile terminals, the interfaces can be cool and the function can be amazing.
So, for middle/little companies, I personally recommend mobile website.
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)
We will be developing a free tool for our existing customers. I have no experience with iPhone and Android but as far as I'm aware you can't just put a file online and add a download link to it.
I'm wondering what are the best options to deliver this application to our customers? Should we just place it in App Store and Android Market (even though it might confuse the people who stumble upon the app and have no idea what or who it's for)?
I'm also aware of Apple's Enterprise Program. I'm not sure how it works technically but it sounds like it can be distributed from local network only, or am I wrong? The app should be obtainable online.
Is it possible to put app in App Store/Market without making it searchable & browseable in the app list of the Store/Market but accessible via direct link only?
Thank you for any suggestions.
For iPhone you need to use the iOS Enterprise Program to create your private market as long as the devices are not jailbreaked.
For Android you can distribute the installation file (.apk file) over your website. You have to tell the users to check the option "Install apps from unknown sources" (look here) in their preferences.
It really sounds like a "mobile web app" is what you're looking for.
There are several toolkits for styling web pages to look and act like an iPhone/Android app.
The user simply navigates to your site, and you can detect if they're browsing from a mobile device and render the page(s) based on that or redirect them to device specific sites.
Users can bookmark your site to create an icon on their home screen.
If your app doesn't depend on a remote connection, you can also just do everything in Javascript and the user can use your app offline.