I'm developing a simple mobile webpage using pure HTML5 and CSS3 for my company. My boss has asked me to make in the webpage a way to create a launcher in the user's mobile phone home screen/launcher to the website, even if with the user's authorization (without the user needing to add the website to the favorites and then creating a widget to it, in Android's case). Is it even possible? I honestly believe not, as it could be a great security breach, but I want to ask to people with more knowledge.
You are right, for security reasons you cannot do this. On iOS as on Android, You will have to show a widget to the user begging him to add your app to his home screen.
On an iPhone you just tap the 'Add to Home Screen' button and the icon is added to the desktop, no drama, and no security breach.
Related
I'm using Linkedin Pulse and to refresh it I unconsciously pulled down the screen when I was at the top of the newsfeed. The Google Chrome refresh symbol appeared when I did this. This made me wonder - is this app just a viewport to a mobile website opened by my default browser (Chrome)? Is it possible to make phone apps that are really just the user using their internet browser? This would save me a lot of development time. Also, if this is possible, can your phone still receive push notifications through this pseudo-mobile app?
I have made several applications which to the user appear to be a native app but really are just web pages using safari.
Apple support this well with the safari browser. It allows you to create an app on the home screen with custom icon, orientation, removing scroll bars and fixed views. All the options are on here (Documentation link)
Android is a bit different. You can achieve the same thing with Chrome. If you save a site with <meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> in the header it will open it in full screen.
As far as I am aware web apps cannot push notification to the user. This has to be done in native apps however there is an app called pushover which you can user as a middle man.
I have a responsive website which can be accessed across multiple devices, our design and application is mainly targeted for mobile users.
To ease access to the site, we want to create a launch icon which will apear on the mobile home screen and user can access the site using one touch, as against launching the browser and typing the url / opening the bookmarked page.
I found a solution for it in IOS, which is also supported by the safari browser using which you can save the page url as a launch icon, can a similar feature be found on a android device? I would also be interested in prompting the users to create the launch icon if they are accessing it from a mobile phone /tablet.
Default Android
This is the preferred way since this is all based on default Android options and doesn't add any maintenance.
As a widget from bookmarks
If on android you long press the home screen and then select the widget option you can create a bookmark. This will let you select a bookmark from your chrome bookmarks to be linked on the desktop. If that works for you you're all set with default Android features. The icon from the bookmark is used on the desktop.
Directly from Chrome
Similar to this approach is selecting the "Add to homescreen" option in the chrome settings menu.
The icon is the icon from the website.
Custom alternative
As stated before the alternative is to create an app that only serves the purpose of being a link to your mobile website. Then you have 2 options:
Using default browser of user
An app that uses intents to open the default browser of the user with your URL. This should be the way to go since the user can now keep on using his favorite browser.
In app browser
An app that contains a single webview loading the URL of your webapp. This last option gives you more control over the browsing experience (blocking scripts, overriding requests, ...). However the user can no longer use his preferred browser.
About the icon
In both cases the Icon will be the icon configured and distributed within the app. This also introduce the need of a new app release if the icon or the URL should change.
About the code
Code examples and information about this webapp in app approach can be found at http://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/webview.html
Another good resource is https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/webview/overview where mobile app development using a native android app with webview is covered with several aspects like tools, css tricks and more.
If I have understood your issue exactly then you would want to show a launcher icon for your website without creating any activity (screen) or doing any programming in android.
If this is the case then my answer is YES, as depicted in snap Google chrome provides this functionality to create a launcher/app icon on home screen.
Some webBrowsers like chrome enable the user to make a bookmark for a specific URL as an icon in the home screen, but I did not get evolved in a project like that. So it is possible.
You can make it simple by creating an application that contain only a webview to open your url and you can then create an icon for your app that hold the website on the home screen as the following in this answer
In my 3 years on Android I have never seen a website ask me to make a shortcut on my homescreen, however, the standard Android browser as well as Dolphin can create shortcuts from bookmarks.
While researching this with a quick search I found this thread states that Chrome allows this as well, and there's even a way to specify a homescreen icon for your users.
The company I work for is exploring creating "an app" version of their online video delivery webapp. The webapp is HTML5 and streams video. Nothing too scary but a lot of the stuff is server-side authentication with third party video hosts, code that will never be in a mobile app for security reasons.
The webapp has a lovely mobile stylesheet that works fine. We want an app that:
Shows a quick splash screen (and even that's optional)
Load the existing mobile website (not include it within the app)
And have the ability to specify an icon, give it a name and then shove it in the relevant marketplaces. That should satisfy the marketing department and it means I stay in control of what the app actually does.
Yeah, it's possibly the laziest app development ever... But, what's the simplest way to generate something like this? I was imagining there might be something out there already where you feed it your starting URL, splash screen, icon and name and it hands you back a multi-platform app.
Note: I'm not looking for something to create an app that looks like the mobile website and I'm not looking to put the content of the mobile website inside the app, I essentially just want a browser that loads the real mobile site.
Have a look at https://www.shoutem.com/. They provide a service similar to what you seem to be looking for but they charge royally for it. Considering the extra features you can easily add with their service your marketing department might just smell profit from using it and may therefore happily sign it off with their well known satanic smile.
There are a number of websites which provide easy web app development for a website. One of the famous is App Maker . Others include:http://www.viziapps.com/ and http://ibuildapp.com/
Since posting this, I have found:
http://www.websitetoapp.net/create
Feed it a URL and an Icon and it'll give you an Android app. Pay $5 and they'll disable adverts. Seems like it might be perfect for the Android half of this project.
Now, is there anything out there that will do this for other platforms?
I would like to create a little application for iPhone or Android smart phones. It's a little Javascript application on my webpage. A price calculator. How can I make it for downloadable and installable on smart phones?
This is my application. I would like to use as a smart phone application, I know it's a very simple app, but it's good for a start. Can you help me with a tutorial, or something? (sorry about my poor English...)
Wrap it around a native app in Phonegap/Cordova.
On iOS, the user can "download" your app by tapping the "share" button and choosing "add to home screen".
You can add a few link tags to specify a suitable icon for your app, hide the address bar, and maybe the status bar. See Apple's documentation
I'm looking to build an android app based off a mobile site. Basically, I just need an app with a browser that I can use as a platform.
Many of the "build an app online" sites offer this, where you just put in the home url etc, but they all include their own ads etc.
Any ideas where to start?
If you want to make your own simple app without Ads, use just a WebView inside of a simgle activity layout set to fill the screen.
Doing this you will eliminate all ads, as well as have the ability to add in more features later on if you so choose.
If you just want to create a launcher icon that will open up the default browser to your sites page, you can do that by just starting a browser intent, and then closing the actual app.
This will allow you to have an app icon and play store listing, however the only thing that iw will do is bring the user to your website like you have mentioned.
Create an Activity with a WebView.
I think you're looking for an app that displays a WebView. However, that will only display the website as if you were looking at it in a mobile browser such as Android Chrome.
If you want the data from a mobile site, without anything else, then you have to hope that the site provides that, or you have to download its HTML and scrape it.