Good morning everyone,
I am facing an issue with both my Android and iOS apps. While they use webviews, we just had a requirement coming in to open the external browsers in order to reach our payment portal. For iOS especially, as part of the iOS guidelines this is preventing my app from getting accepted unfortunately.
I know how to open the browser externally, however I cannot close it as easily. It seems to boil down to it being a different application all together opened from either my android or iOS code. In this aspect window.close() or something similar does not work.
My question is, is there a trick to it using custom url schemes, all I am trying to achieve is to press a button in my external browser and close said browser which would bring my app back to front.
Or is there some kind of custom intent library for android which could help me achieve the same result.
Any hint would be appreciated, as my research so far as not been very fruitful.. Thank you in advance.
Related
I have built a chrome extension that works fine. I know I can't deploy it to android. So I would have to build an app. The app may or may not have anything to do with chrome; I don't know. This isn't a chrome extension question.
But as to the integration between the app and the on-board browser, I see the android api doesn't have any functionality for browser or web integration? Is that correct?
I'm just making sure because building an app that is essentially it's own proprietary browser, just to get my functionality onto android, is not really something I think a lot of people would download. I'm looking for a more integrated way than that. Is there one?
For those who say impossible, I know for a fact there is an app which added a context menu inside chrome on android but I have no idea how they did that or what other integration is possible. It was a webpage pdf converter. Upon clicking that menu it converted the webpage to pdf, and opened the pdf in the app.
I have been playing around with PhoneGap for a little while, and getting it set up to work correctly with Google Drive API is proving to be far more difficult than setting up a website which does the same.
I am wondering if it would be more to my advantage to cease trying to make the full app work with phonegap, and instead use phonegap to access a hosted site.
Note that I do not wish to open the site in the default browser. The goal would be to make it appear to be an application (no borders, url, back button, etc), but have the web server handle everything behind the scenes.
I know PhoneGap has an In-App-Browser available. Is this something that is possible with it? Or does it only function for more limited use?
Thanks
You can definitely use a WebView for your app, which display the webpage but give you the ability to control the layout around it. Running a WebView instead of native code may cost some performance but it's doable.
I ask a suggestion about a user Experience issueaccessing a browser URL on a mobile phone:
how can a "basic" user EASILY can access a web app on the browser of a handset (mobile phone/tablet, with possibly a solution not dependent on the specific OS (as usual: Android (mainly I'm interested on this OS)/iOS/Windows Phone/etc. on the handset ?
In other terms:
How can I set a simple OS-indipendent (BROWSER-indipendent) URL desktop-shortcut ?
I explain better:
I realized a simple html/css/js/bootstrap web app (e-commerce) to be used from a handset. Some screnshots here:
https://twitter.com/solyarisoftware/status/478946171420155904/photo/1
https://twitter.com/solyarisoftware/status/477373808551411712/photo/1
The web app (that user access through the browser of the handset) could be a possible valid alternative to an expensive native app. But I have this problem:
because my application is an e-commerce (in food realms) that could be used by a vast body of people tipically "inexpert" ... in facts many users that access phone apps have difficulties to just enter a URL on a web browser...
I confess I get bored myself to enter a long URL, let say:
http://mysuperbecommerce.com/mymarketplace/myshop
so, how to do to SIMPLIFY the access to the URL for the lazy/inexpert users ?
I thinked about some possible solutions:
SOLUTION 1. A BROWSER DESKTOP URL SHORTCUT
(obvious! you could say!) Of course, but this is not so perfect:
- is usually a specific feature of the browser... and by example in my case, with an Android phone, with Chrome. Dolphin and native Android browser I get confused myself to save and retrieve shortcuts ...
- is dependendt by the OS
SOLUTION 2. "DIRECTORY" APP LUNCH AN "INTENT"
I thinked about a native app that just act as "redirector", I read here and there some Android code: the native app just start and run the "Intent" giving a URL to the browser... make sense ?
Maybe something interesting here:
Adding URL shortcut to mobile screen through a link on the website
Nevertheless I'm asking if there is a better way, maybe an (Android) app just made with this scope ? (I didn't find it)
SOLUTION 3. HYBRID-NATIVE APP
Ok... Embed the web app in some Hybrid-native framework (as Phonegap/Cordova)
Any suggestion welcome!
Thanks for your patience
giorgio
A possible "solution" for Android OS I used
is this very essential "Web Shortcuts" app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unknowndevelopers.bm
BTW, There are someones similar: "ShortcutToURL" or "URLWidget" apps.
Is not a perfect solution, any alternative suggestion still welcome.
I'm building an HTML5 application that will be accessed via Firefox on an specific Android tablet. One of the main options is to share an image on Instagram.
For Apple devices we have the "instagram://" hooks, but they don't exist for Android. I've already read a lot about to use Intent, but I think it's not possible since it's an web app.
I need any solution to get out of my Firefox browser and show Instagram application. It's okay to minimize the browser and just go to the main Android screen.
Someone have any idea?
Thanks a lot.
If i understand your question I think this is what your are looking for
EDIT: taken from that site as an example
To launch the Zxing barcode scanner app, you encode your href on the
anchor as follows:
<a href="intent://scan/#Intent;scheme=zxing;package=com.google.zxing.client.android;end">
Take a QR code See the Android Zxing Manifest, which defines the
package and the host.
is it possible to programmatically access the website that is currently displayed within the Android browser?
As far as I know the native Browser doesn't handle plugins (please correct me if I'm wrong), so I thought that reading the browser cache would be an option.
Is there a more sophisticated way to get the currently displayed HTML?
Thanks in advance!
S.
is it possible to programmatically access the website that is currently displayed within the Android browser?
That would be a security violation, so, no. Also bear in mind that there are several Web browsers for Android.
As far as I know the native Browser doesn't handle plugins (please correct me if I'm wrong)
The standard browser app supports plugins, but not ones downloaded on the fly. So, for example, it supports the Flash plugin (on Android 2.2+), but you have to install Flash separately first.