I've an android app already developed.
The android app is essentially a wrapper around a HTML5 web app.
We use HTML5 offline caching to provide the ability to play when disconnected from the internet.
Chrome/Firefox on the desktop will cache the video and images however Android devices
appear to selectively ignore video in the cache manifest which prevents the video from
being stored locally on the device.
It's understandable that Android would ignore caching video to keep the storage use to a
minimum on mobile devices but we need a way around this.
Just stumbled across this question after I stumbled across an answer - so thought i'd help out!
I'm trying to do a similar thing for Android/iOS, and as far as I know the appcache is very restricted on mobile devices (Android varies depending on available disk space & browser used, and on iOS I haven't had luck getting above 50mb).
I recommend using a framework such as PhoneGap or Chrome Apps - they offer other forms of local storage by communicating with the device's native file APIs.
Related
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.
I need to develop an app for a website. The problem is that on the site are Flash videos.
Is there a way to integrate the Flash in my Android app?
Thank you!
It's recommended that you don't as Android is phased out as mentioned. Depending on the complexity, it would be best to replace flash videos with HTML5 where possible.
If you insist on it however, it's possible as long as the user has the Flash plugin installed using a WebView:
How to Enable Flash Plugin in Webview?
Also note that the flash plugin is fairly limited - it has performance and sound sync issues and does not respond to clicks and key presses like the desktop version of flash does (Though oddly, the old Windows Mobile version was quite performant and had no key or mouse issues... huh)
I have been trying to load textures for a WebGL application in a Chrome browser in an Android device
I came across a similar post THREE.js - Can't load texture locally where a solution to load textures is given for Chrome which works only on a PC/laptop device
The flag --allow-file-access-from-files works on a laptop device as I can use the command line but how to do it on a mobile device?
Can someone please help with this?
The Crosswalk projects embeds a Chromium webview and, by standard, will allow the loading of textures and models from files.You can compile your demo with Crosswalk by using this if you have a blacklisted gpu:
make_apk.py --package=org.crosswalkproject.yourproject \ --manifest=your_webgl_demo/manifest.json --xwalk-command-line='--ignore-gpu-blacklist'
The last part isn't necessary if your gpu supports webgl completely.
If you have problems though, replace the last part with
--xwalk-command-line='--disable-web-security'
which will give you total access to files (with all the risks involved).
But the simplest method is to use a webserver on android to access files from 127.0.0.1:8080.
There are many free webservers on the playstore and I use them on a daily basis to test webgl demos on my device.
Is there any way to load the swf files directly without use of webview..
Now i am trying to run swf files using webview but the swf file is very slow on device.
In short according to my procedure the flash file running on android device and tablet is very slow as compared to if i view this on my desktop pc.
I don't think there is a standalone flash player for Android. But even if there was it would mean that people need to install that first before starting your app.
I believe the slowness you experience as nothing to do with webviews but simply with the resources available on a mobile device (1/3rd minimum of the cpu device and 1/10th of the memory).
You can check if that is the case by simply trying to launch your swf from the native web browser of your device and see if its better. If not, the problem is really your device.
You will probably need to create a strip down version of your flash for mobile devices.
Beside you should know that adobe plans to stop flash for mobile devices : http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/adobe-confirms-flash-support-android-ice-cream-sandwich/2011-11-21
Good luck
Is anyone familiar with a comprehensive list of mobile devices and their browser's cache limits for images?
I found one reference for iPhone:
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/02/iphone-cache-performance.html
But it's 3 years old. It does state, however, that the iPhone won't cache images over 25k.
I'd like to know if that's still true and if anyone has similar info for Nokia, BlackBerry and Android devices.
The only posts I could figure out (by searching on Google) are the following:
Mobile Browser Cache Limits: Android, iOS, and webOS
Mobile Browser Cache Limits, Revisited
How Mobile Browser Cache Affects Browsing on iOS, Android, and More