First of all, let me emphasize that we are not looking for a specific code snippets for a solution. We believe that this problem of ours started with some design flaws. So we are looking for a general direction with which we can start looking for specific methods to solve this issue.
We have an app that has an notice board where admins and users can create threads.
However, we made a thread where people can download our excel template. We posted our link to this excel file like so:
(I apologize for non-English thread as we are located in Korea)
So in this thread page, the image in the middle is the link.
When you tap(click) on this image, a more detailed download page shows up.
When you press the download button, nothing happens. It is supposed to automatically lead to downloading process but it does not.
I suspect that the problem resides in our application structure where whatever a user does in the thread stays in the webview and webview only. Is there any way to make this download take place? The only workaround we found is to press and hold the link button until some options show up and press "open in the browser". However, this is quite inconvenient for normal users and we need to fix this.
Thanks a lot!
I am looking for a way to open the native android alarm clock app when a user clicks on the link or button on a web browser of the android. So basically need to open the native android app from web application. I tried using intent://#Intent;package=com.android.deskclock;end' and it is not working. I am wondering if I am using the wrong package name or it is not even possible in android.
Thank you much for help!
According to this documentation, this is not possible. In particular, this footnote is the limiting factor:
Only activities that have the category filter, android.intent.category.BROWSABLE are able to be invoked using this method as it indicates that the application is safe to open from the Browser.
If you look at the AndroidManifest.xml for the DeskClock app, none of the activities contain the android.intent.category.BROWSABLE category filter, meaning none of them can be opened from the browser.
I have a suspicion that the problem is that you are not providing a URI path in your URL. It might need to be a path declared in the app's manifest. See: https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/intents
This could change it to ie intent://path/#Intent;package=com.android.deskclock;end'
It might be helpful if you were to look at the javascript console when you try to click on that link in Chrome, there might be details of what went wrong.
Keep in mind that the alarm clock app is not necessarily consistent. Manufacturers can remove the default alarm clock app to replace it with a different one, or just modify the source code so that it has the same package name but different source code. You could try opening multiple package names from javascript depending on what happens when the intent can't be opened.
Welcome to code party
You can get a android device IFrame from appetize site.
This is the easiest way for show android apps in web applications.
Update me in comments ;)
I'm trying to receive a link shared from another application like browser or youtube into my phonegap app. I'm using phonegap build (build.phonegap.com) to make my app.
I'd like to know how to make my app appear in the 'share' list for links.
All solutions I found online are making me edit Android Manifest or Java files, but is there a way (a plugin of sorts) I can use to make data transfer between apps possible?
There is a plugin available for PhoneGap which will handle receiving content from other application. You can use it. Following is the link to this plugin. https://www.npmjs.com/package/cordova-plugin-intent
If you find any issue or something else other than that functionality, you can make the custom plugin so that you will have direct access of java file from javascript.
If I understand your question correctly, you're talking about deep linking in android. The details about it can be found here
Correct me if I explain your ideas wrong: What you want to do is that you have an URL that showed up in another application (Ex: Facebook Messenger, Slack, ...) and you want after clicking it, a list of application that can be used to open that link appear and you want your app to be listed there.
But here is the problem, how can the OS knows what apps it can suggest to the end-user and what kind of link your is acceptable to your app? the answer lies in your application manifest and to be more precise, the intent-filter tag. It tells the OS what you kind of url you want and also use it to determine if the OS should suggest your app to be open by using that link for the user.
So the answer for your question about doing without editing Manifest is impossible. As for the reason why you don't want to edit your apps is unknown to me but I still suggest you to take a look at this tutorial. It still involves editing your manifest but the guide it self is clear and easy to implement.
Hope this help ^^
I'm having this little issue with PhoneGap when playing around with it:
Whenever I open an external link on my iPhone, it goes fullscreen and there is no way back but terminate the app and start again. I've read some articles and think this could be easily fixed by just calling window.open (or navigator.app.loadUrl on Android).
However, the problem continues with 3rd party library. In particular, I'm using Google Maps and the widget has little links to "Terms of Use" and something else. Tapping this link will load the Google URL full screen again.
My question is, is there any global configuration/code to either modify the in-app web browser (add header, back button and so on) or open every external links on device's default browser?
Thanks for reading and helping :)
First you study about InAppBrowser.
InAppBrowser open with close(done) button . This is not working means you also use ChildBrowser.
Reference 1
Reference 2
We have a website that offers an e-mail service. We would like to create a fully fledged app for this but cannot afford this right now. In the mean time it would be great if we could give users an icon on their phones that will take them to a page formatted for mobile on the internet. So what I'd like to know is how can we get an icon on an android users phone that will simply launch a web link in a browser- does this have to be an app, is there an easier way, or am I over estimating how complicated it would be to make this as an app anyway?
Thanks in advance
Create a new Android project (after following the SDK installation steps provided at http://developer.android.com)
on the directory /res/drawable-*dpi you have the laucher icons. Modify all of them.
In the main activity, delete all inside the onCreate method an put this:
String url = "http://www.YOUR-URL.com";
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
i.setData(Uri.parse(url));
startActivity(i);
This will open the android browser with the URL provided.
I have done projects like this in the past, it is very simple. You need to create a website formatted for a smaller screen. Once you do this, building an android app that displays your website inside it is simple. You can even remove all of the android browser toolbars so it appears as if your website is a real android application. Google android webviews, this will point you in the right direction.
See here for what's probably the best instruction page on how to do exactly that:
http://intelnav.50webs.com/app_project.html
It's based on a Webview, that is it opens the page and does all the navigation in the app window, not in the default browser. So if you want to open it in the browser, you have to use Intent, as said in previous answers.
My 2 pennies worth, I think it's better in the app window unless you really want complex navigation with the possibility of opening additional tabs, windows and so on. The drawback with the external browser is that, as far as I could see, there's no way to tell if the page is already open in the browser so you'll launch a different copy (in a new tab) every time. If the user doesn't close the tab at the end, they usually don't, it can become quite annoying. Besides, within an app you'll probably have somewhat better possibilities for ads should you ever want them.
Versus a simple home-screen bookmark, as others pointed out, it's simpler and more convenient for end users to just download an app from an online store (usually Google Play). It's what they're used to do. And they do have a lot of additional info available, like what it does, what others say about it, screen shots (if you provide some for them but you should). Plus a way to comment / complain themselves. It's a different thing. Technically it may not make a lot of sense but from a simple user's perspective it's clearly better IMO.
One way is to bookmark the site and then add it to your home screen. Source
It seems to me like you need a mobile version of your web page. Do you have that already? Once you have your mobile website (ie. website optimized for mobile devices), you could create a simple application with only one WebView. All content would be fetched from your site and displayed inside a webview. This is trivial to make, however, making an entire mobile website will take some time.
Note that you do not HAVE TO have a mobile website, you could pack you existing website into a WebView, but this would lower user experience.
you would build an app that launches a browser intent linking to your website, or a custom WebView to launch your website in full screen without any navigation bar etc..
The only easier way is to put instructions on your site (directly, or as a contextual pop-up) on how to add the bookmark as an icon on your home screen. This can be slightly more complicated on Android, and depends on the browser. A simpler option for your potential users is to provide a wrapper app via the Marketplace.
It is not overly complicated to create a simple wrapper Android app in Java that launches the browser, using Intents. The essential browser launch code is basically this:
Uri uriUrl = Uri.parse("http://www.yourwebpage.com");
Intent launchBrowser = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uriUrl);
startActivity(launchBrowser);
A more detailed tutorial for creating this is available here:
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android/launch-android-browser/
Try this kick-start mobile device app for showing websites. Written with cordova for platforms like android, ios, browser and so on: https://github.com/jetedonner/ch.kimhauser.cordova.kickstartwebsite (GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.kimhauser.cordova.kickstartwebsite, Website: http://kimhauser.ch/index.php/projects/cordova-phonegap/kick-start-website)