I need help?
Can i make android apps using only html5, javascript and css and from
scratch.
Yes. Build your web application with responsive view features and add a json manifest file to let the android browser add it to the home screen as an app. The next time your users opens your app by clicking on your app icon in the home screen it will work like an app(full screen,no address bar etc.,) . You don't have to even put your app in web store.
But the API's supported are minimal compared to a full fledged native app.
The complete list of supported api's here . You might be surprised to see some api's like the battery api, offline storage so have a look.
Real world example:
visit aliexpress in your mobile browser and add to home screen.
React Native is probably the most popular library for developing Mobile Apps using Javascript. Note that it doesn't exactly use Javascript, but is built on top of the React library.
Alternatively, there's a framework called Electron that uses Javascript,HTML, and CSS to build an application. It is built on top of Node.js. It was primarily made for building Desktop Apps. But you can use their Native Node Modules for building Mobile Applications.
You can find Electron here: https://www.electronjs.org/
The docs for the Native Node module for Electron: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/using-native-node-modules
yes, you can do. please check following:
http://phonegap.com/products/
It will help you.
Related
This might be a naive question but I want to know if it's possible to run react on android devices?
I'm new to react - I only know the basics of it. I know that react-native does not use html but native-ish objects as markup.
I just want to create a really simple app which I want to be able to access per browser but also as app.
So yeah. It's kinda hard to google this question beacuse you'll get flooded with react-native answers. Or well - maybe I just haven't tried hard enough.
Yes, although this should not be considered good practice.
You can create an app that shows a WebView where you load your react code from the local file system. See also adding ReactJS in android Webview
Yeah absolutely you can run react on an Android device!
A very common way that mobile apps implement this (outside of React Native), is to have the app open a WebView – which just opens a view of a website (running React).
These apps are slower than native-ly written apps or React Native, because there's an extra layer of translation. They are typically the simplest version of an app – all they do is open the WebView and let a responsive web app take over from there.
There's even a few tools to compile a single set of source code into apps for multiple operating systems (Android and iOS at once).
Cordova and Electron(desktop) are a few popular options.
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 !
Please, am a web developer. I just built a web app for a school to manage their results and fees.
Now, i intend to build an app on android and ios so its 'easier' for both staff and students to get notifications and interact better.
Is JQuery mobile the asnwer?
Thanks for your reply
jQuery Mobile doesn't create an application for Android nor for iOS, it only makes websites look better on said platforms.
To create a real, native, application for Android you should use Android Studio. To do the same for iOS you need XCode and MAC OS X.
But, if you prefer to write websites, Apache Cordova does what you need. Allows you to create apps for any platform using your usual HTML, CSS and Javascript.
I'll drop the link here so you can check it out.
https://cordova.apache.org/
Another approach is creating a basic Android and iOS app that simply opens a web page (your website), but it is most of the time lacking in performance. If this last approach interests you, just look up "WebView" for Android, "UIWebView" for iOS (Obviously you'll need Android Studio and XCode)
EDIT
This is an old answer, now a ton of different technologies exist to build multiplatform applications, without even losing out on performance (for example, see react-native)
If you have already built the app using JQuery mobile and want to make it into an app I recommend looking at Cordova (PhoneGap) https://cordova.apache.org/
For notifications etc I found https://www.pushwoosh.com/ to have the best integration
What I am trying to do might not be quite difficult but I am confusing myself. I am trying to build an app only for Android that will play videos for my company.
As I am not an native Android developer what I did is using html, jquery and phonegap to create and bundle my app as a web view which will help the end user installing the app instead of going to a URL and then open it.
Now here the challenge starts for me, I am looking for touch optimized design which should look like a native app. I can use twitter bootstrap , foundation or any other CSS framework to make my design responsive. I also know how to make ajax based animated page loading which will help me in preventing complete page load.
The real issue: is css the only and right way to design a mobile app? Does apps like Facebook , Youtube also make use of Css to design their native apps?
I do not want to use jquery mobile because I simply don't like their design patterns.
Again, my question might seems to be foolish. What I want to use are industry standard tools to build my app, even if I have to dig into Android tutorials and learn it from scratch.
Any help ,links or guidance will be helpful.
Native apps do typically not use HTML/CSS, and instead use the widgets etc provided by the platform. That's what native means. Facebook recently switched from a web view/HTML5 implementation to native (at least on Android).
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.