I'm developing a Point-of-Sale solution to be deployed on an iPad. The application will be engineered as a web application. I've seen some great info on how to lock down the iPad to a specific application and so this gets me halfway to my solution; the application I lock down to will be the browser.
Lock-down iPhone/iPod/iPad so it can only run one app
Now, can I take this one step further? Can I lock down the browser to disallow ad-hoc browsing? I'd like to do this because I want to ensure that the user is constrained to the confines of the POS application at all times.
(If I can't do this, I'll need to write a small shim application to host my web application and I don't want to do this, because this violates the zero-install architecture we're trying to achieve.)
Alternatively, is there a way to achieve this with an Android tablet? As the application is constructed with HTML5, we are relatively agnostic as to the client device.
Thanks for your advice!
You could add the Website to the Homescreen. Then it appears as an app - maybe you can then lock it down with the mechanism you mentioned.
Related
If I have a suite of Android tablets, is it possible that I can have Chrome be the only app that is used on the tablet whilst also locking Chrome to access 1 URL?
We're building a web app for school kids and we want to lock down its use for everything else.
I understand there's a kiosk mode that will lock down to a single app, just can't see anything about disabling the ability to navigate to another website.
I guess you're better going with building an webview app.
That way, you can use android's native kiosk mode to lock the device into that app, that's actually just a webview to your web app.
Edit: Also, I found out something that could be interesting for your case: Android's Lock Task Mode
From documentation:
Android can run tasks in an immersive, kiosk-like fashion called lock task mode. You might use lock task mode if you’re developing a kiosk application or a launcher to present a collection of apps. When the system runs in lock task mode, device users typically can’t see notifications, access non-allowlisted apps, or return to the home screen (unless the home screen is allowlisted).
Adding another answer because I actually found what you're looking for.
You can setup an application to change the device's policies to lock-on on the Chrome app and then lock Chrome to a single website.
Here is the full reference of the answer you're looking for.
I am a beginner in Android development. I am developing a kiosk for an android 6. I can not unfortunately use the LOCKTASK MODE because it is a specific hardware with users unclear.
I finally found an open source kiosk that I want to adapt. Indeed, the kiosk can control the outputs of the user, especially avoid going into the settings.
But when I launch another application, we exit the kiosk mode and the user can touch the parameters.
Hence my question, is it possible to open an application in a "launcher" application like an iframe in html?
I have a medium size project on React+Nodejs and I need to choose best suitable technology for the mobile part. I am considering React Native or Web Progressive Apps for that. I want to ask you guys what is your experience so far about performance of "native-like" React Native versus WPA based apps.
I need to put into consideration:
1. Making it as easy as possible to make a transfer from ReactJS code into mobile.
2. Hardware support on mobile devices. Such as Barcode reading and NFC.
3. Push notifications.
4. Function well on both Android and iOS.
Biggest question is whether WPA technology has already become mature enough to trust it or not.
I had to make the same decision couple of months back and we chose PWA (not the answer for everyone yet).
Here is why we chose PWA,
1) Performance - Web can now perform 60fps - The magic number needs for native like smooth transitions.
2) Cost - Its fast and easy to build a product for both as a mobile app and web using PWA with no learning curve for existing web developers.
3) Proven - Starting from Twitter lite to Flipkart, there are so many success stories on PWA. No doubt its reliable. With iOS support coming couple of months back, now all major browsers support it.
PWA limitations and workarrounds,
1) Hardware - PWAs are limited to what web can do today. So there are hardwares like bar-code scanner we don't have any scope of support anytime soon and there are some hardware which very limited support and some hardware like Bluetooth with average support(in terms of % of browser versions supporting today) We had to build a small Android Native application to interact with these hardware and pass on the info to PWA suing web sockets. Say, when a barcode is scanned, this native Android service will listen for and receive it and pass on to our PWA. Same thing goes to NFC.
2) Packing and deploying - There is no official way to generate an APK and distribute in corporate environment. We were able to extract the APK after adding the PWA app to home screen using some file explorer and use that to distribute though. Havent tried on iOS. Hope for latest versions for any mobile OS, we can use cordova(not pure PWA but we get most of the benefits like Service Worker) to package and distribute as well.
Smartphone and tablet use is so diverse now that the only way to see if a website is actually rendering properly is to directly view it on the device itself (especially if it is an interactive bug).
Is there a way I can push a url to several devices in front of me?
I'd really want to do this in-house and not use an outside service if possible since this is for development.
If I have to do a one-time configuration on each device that is fine of course but the idea is that it would go to the url by itself as if it was entered directly.
I've seen "pushbullet" and apparently there used to be service called Site-To-Phone that no longer exists, but again, in-house would be best.
I just want to know whether it is possible to develop an Android application that will allow remotely controlling an Android phone in the same way that remote desktop, or team viewer allows control over desktop operating systems. Is it possible on an unrooted phone?
The basic functionlit required to acompolish this is would be the ability to capture the frame buffer and programmatically invoke touch on the device.
Any feedback on this matter would be highly appreciated.
No, You would have to modify the OS in order to get that functionality. It is dissallowed for obvious security purposes.
The consensus used to be that it wasn't possible pre-Kit-Kat or without root, but there is a free Android app I came across recently which seems to have figured it out and does exactly what you're asking. It is called Mobizen, and it operates similar to Chromecast or YouTube, pairing the device app with the desktop app (USB) or web-app (Mobile and Wifi).
https://www.mobizen.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rsupport.mvagent&hl=en
How they implemented everything though, I don't know. But it's quite impressive and I would love to get ahold of some source/example code.