I'm porting over an android mobile app into an smart tv app (android based). There are some navigation problems by using the remote controller. I think that's because I don't need to take care of focus issue most of the time in the mobile app. Is there any good tutorials or articles about porting over the android mobile app into android smart tv, especially regarding with remote navigation part? Thanks
You should take a tour at Android TV official design guide pages at http://developer.android.com/design/tv/index.html
And especially you should pay attention to the UI design section http://developer.android.com/design/tv/patterns.html
There is also a session on the topic of "Create Quality Apps for TV" at
http://developer.android.com/distribute/essentials/quality/tv.html
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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 !
I'm currently getting involved in an app project with a web site that will mirror its actions, the main goal is to confirm presence in clubs and bars and get discounts with it. (A little more than that, but not the scope of the question).
Despite my programming experience, I've never developed an app before, and at this time we already have the front-end of the website done, my question is if there is any advantage in developing the app from scratch, with an IDE or is it just time-wasting compared to using tools like those recommended in this article here.
What could be the drawbacks of just "converting" the website to an app?
TL;DR: Developing an app, is worth it to develop with an IDE or an online paid tool should do this job perfectly?
Both the options are viable.
Facebook, an extremely popular app just uses a WebView and renders the mobile version of their website (I am oversimplifying here). You still need a mobile version of the website though. The downside is, it will not look (or feel) as good as a native app.
On the other hand, a separate native app means more maintenance efforts.
Pick your poison.
I want to build a simple app where everything is offline and mostly it is an informational app with info pages and list pages. What is the best way to build an HTML5 app for it so I can easily port it to different platforms? I'm looking for a free solution.
This developer had an HTML5 app so he just converted it to and Android app as mentioned in the answer: Convert HTML5 into standalone Android App. So, is that the way to go if I'm building one from scratch? Would it be just as easy to convert it to iOS?
Also, how does performance look for such an app on Android/iOS/Windows Phone? I mean would the page sliding animation and stuff be just as fluid as a native app given that it is so simple?
Give PhoneGap a shot. It's probably the most popular platform that allows you to create mobile apps utilizing a browser, and it's free to use :)
I'm thinking about attending a Google TV hackathon event later this week, and I have no experience with Google TV. It seems that Android is the main platform to build on, but I want to run my existing web app on Google TV. I was wondering how difficult of a job it is, and if it's something that can be done over a weekend. Can anyone provide advice?
Android is a platform to build on for GoogleTV, and it has some advantages, but GoogleTV also has Chrome built in. You can put your web app on Chrome first, and migrate to Android afterwards.
I think the key success factor for any app on Google TV is adherence to the design guidelines. Regardless of which platform you use, you need to design for a 10 foot environment and a mouseless control system. Remember:
TV is a passive environment: People want to watch more and interact less.
People are sitting far away from the screen. Visual processing changes.
TV is more of a group environment.
You are guaranteed a D-pad on a remote control, nothing more.
Very high audio and video quality is expected
Your app is competing with what's on TV.
It really depends on what your webapp does. If it uses Flash, or not. There are lots of things to consider before doing just a "port". On the other hand, if your really interested in that, you might wish to look at this article I wrote: Moving Web Content to Google TV Android Apps If your app isn't already D-pad navigable, you might be interested in the jQuery & Closure extensions as well as our template libraries.
Chrome on Google TV is Chrome 11 w/ security patches. A WebView hasn't really changed in quite a while. If you've got significant CSS3 usage, you'll notice it.
To port existing website to optimized version for Google TV, the key ingredient is use some Javascript library to make your sites D-pad navigable. There are a couple of libraries jQuery and Closure available: https://developers.google.com/tv/web/docs/tools_libraries.
If your site has video content, the easiest way is focus on them and leverage on the Google TV Templates available here: https://developers.google.com/tv/web/docs/gtv-templates.
If videos content you have is relatively static, you may hard code them into your web pages, as done in the Templates above. But if they change often and you'd like to have a backend with an admin page to manage them using e.g. MySQL, read this article to see how it can be done: https://developers.google.com/tv/web/docs/ajax_gtv_templates_tutorial
You can host videos on your own server or play them directly from YouTube. If you need the Javascript to play them from YouTube, let's start a new thread.
I have an iOS app (developed natively in Objective C) that provides a week-long diet-plan of recipes, plus with shopping lists, and coaching video and audio. The app heavily relies on UITableViews for navigation.
The client has now asked to make this app cross-platform with Android and add some extra content for in-app purchasing.
I've used Corona for a story-book app (also iOS) and I see that tableviews are supported on iOS using Corona Widgets... but I can't find whether they are supported on Android (I don't yet have a device to test on) or whether there is another (reasonable) way to code a UITableView equivalent.
As a bit of background info, I also tried Appcelerator Titanium, but found the loading of tableviews tend to lag as soon as you want to do anything creative with them (like adding images or backgrounds). Also I already have a Corona subscription and don't really want to have to pay for the Titanium+Mods subscription, to support in-App purchasing. ;-D
I would appreciate the insights of those who use Corona for cross-platform of non-game apps.
Thank you.
Yup, they sure are supported on Android. My client asked the same and I am about to submit next week. No issues at all on Android :)
yes... Corona is much better sdk for ios..