I am working on a project where I need to make an Android and iOS app. The App is very simple and only contains buttons with labels on them. When you push a button, the App is going to play a sound. That is the easy part now comes my question and what I need help with. The User wants to be able to have a kind of control admin panel were he can change the sounds and the labels on the buttons. How can I do this easily?
I thought it would be best to make a web page with a kind of form were the user chooses the sounds and labels. What is the best way to connect the web page and the apps?
If the application is that simple use the web technology - the Sencha Touch is very popular web (HTML(5)/JavaScript/CSS3) framework for that. The advantage of the Sencha Touch is the application optimization for mobile phone browsers (screen sizes, rotation, touch events, UI elements).
When you will be done with the Sencha Touch you can use the PhoneGap - this is a wrapper for web content written in native language (Java on Android, Objective-C on iPhone, etc.).
PhoneGap is using the embedded web view component to render the web content you prepare with use of the Sencha Touch. It creates the impression that your application is native one., so you can launch it outside of web browser.
This is of course not the perfect solution and has many (really many) drawbacks, but for your case it might be sufficient and is worth to check.
I would use Phonegap http://phonegap.com/ you can create a web app and run it on a number of different devices.
Related
I have a client with two mobile apps. The first APP1 is built natively using Java and Objective-C. The second APP2 has been build using Unity.
Now the client wants to add a common functionality to both APP1 and APP2. The functionality is some new promo screens with user interaction to win credits.
I was considering to propose WebViews for this, however I came across to Progressive Web Apps.
I would like to ask whether is it possible to add a PWA in existing apps by properly initializing WebViews. I guess that the answer is 'yes'. But is there any benefit (apart from the caching) from using PWA instead of common HTML pages since the mobile app is already there?
Thank you!
A PWA is nothing more than a regular HTML webpage, which has added bonus functionality. Those bonus functionality is the incredible ease of install (if not on iOS, at least), and the offline capabilities.
The offline capabilities mostly means that the app will work (for the most part), even when no internet is available.
The easy install functionality means that if you open the site on Chrome for Android, you can "install" the app directly, without going through the app store. This doesn't work properly on iOS, however.
However, at the end a PWA is still just a webpage. This means that it is not just an app for iOS, or Android. It is an actual webpage, with an URL you can surf to. Installing a PWA just takes a local copy, and displays it in such a way that it looks like a native app.
So, in your case, there is no real bonus of making a PWA. If I read correctly, you just need to add a simple HTML page to both apps, right? You can make this a website, and then use WebView to navigate to it, sure. But there is no need to make it a PWA; it will just run in the native app itself.
I have been playing around with PhoneGap for a little while, and getting it set up to work correctly with Google Drive API is proving to be far more difficult than setting up a website which does the same.
I am wondering if it would be more to my advantage to cease trying to make the full app work with phonegap, and instead use phonegap to access a hosted site.
Note that I do not wish to open the site in the default browser. The goal would be to make it appear to be an application (no borders, url, back button, etc), but have the web server handle everything behind the scenes.
I know PhoneGap has an In-App-Browser available. Is this something that is possible with it? Or does it only function for more limited use?
Thanks
You can definitely use a WebView for your app, which display the webpage but give you the ability to control the layout around it. Running a WebView instead of native code may cost some performance but it's doable.
I'm trying to do some simple website application for displaying my website and add some specific functionality to it.
My idea is to do something like Facebook app for mobile. Simply I need to display a website and replace File input - users should be able to capture a picture from camera or pick it from gallery (multiple select) and attach it to a post.
TL;DR;
Check images in the bottom.
What I have tried:
Using Cordova with Camera and Image picker plugin and displaying webpage in InnAppBrowser
Taking pictures with camera and picking pictures from gallery and then uploading them to server - there is a lot of examples of it.
What troubles I have found:
InnAppBrowser is forced fullscreen so I cannot resize it and place some buttons for picking pictures under it.
What do I need:
I just need to somehow attach images (from gallery or camera) to form file input or upload them to some kind of api instead - the api would process images on server and return some IDs which I can use instead of file input in the form on page to attach images to the post. Some hidden input where I would just insert IDs of uploaded images to be attached to the post (I'd write some if conditions into my PHP script).
I need my application to be multi-platform (Android, IOS, WP) so that is the reason I'm using Apache Cordova. I've tried lot of solutions and I've searched like for 5 hours. But I wasn't able to find anything useful.
Have somebody some experience in this way? Did somebody make some kind of that application?
If you can suggest any solution (it is not important to be a Cordova but it must be multiplatform) I'd be glad!
Thanks for your time!
Images
There is screen of desktop version with normal file input:
There is my vision of mobile application version with camera and image picker option right under web browser:
I guess I was not clear. The technical answer is Cordova/Phonegap are not for creating website applications. This means technically there is no "correct way" to do what you are asking.
For a website applications, all the pages are rendered from the website and controlled from the webpage/webbrowser.
For a mobile application, all the pages that the application can directly control are rendered on the mobile device. However, pages can be rendered (and/or created) from either the server or the mobile application, but the control of the page stays with the side that rendered (or created) the page. There is clear line between the two sides that can be moved, but at the *peril* of the programmer. (There are no points for being clever here, only added security issues.)
However, the Cordova and Phonegap do have plugins.The entire purpose is to use plugins to make certain task easier. However, there is a clear line between the phone and the website. To be clear on this last part, this means that all of the "plugin services" on the phone (accelerometer, contact list, etc.) are directly available to the application, and not the website. However, some of the "services" are also available as HTML5 APIs, such 'camera' and 'geolocation' – mixing the two is dangerous. The HTML5 APIs should remain on the webserver side, if used. The UX is different for HTML5. (I will not discuss HTML5 APIs any further, as they are beyond the scope of this discussion)
To make your idea work, you will need the following "core" (or equivalent third-party) plugins
file-transfer
camera (or equivalent)
inappbrowser
On the file-transfer and camera, you can do everything from the webserver, if you want. Then the only task for the end-user is to select the appropriate folder and image. If you do this from the server-side, then you CANNOT use the plugins.
If you want to use the plugins, then you cannot use a server-side generated webpage. You must create the form on the mobile device. This means the page and the form reside on the mobile device. However, if you write your webpage correctly you can dynamically add or delete elements. This means on the mobile side you have control over every step of the user experience and can enhance that experience.
On the inappbrowser, a common trick is to put the website in an iframe. However, you have no direct control on the iframe. Another common trick is to submit to the server via an API – then have the visible webpage update separately. Another common trick is to have a webpage with a websocket that could handle the webpage update. However, this could also be done with a push to the webpage, or have the webpage do polling of the server. Again, the App has NO direct control of the webpage.
This entire thread makes the following assumptions.
There is no "correct way" to do this task.
The images (photos) are stored on a website, and are publicly available for viewing.
It also assumes that no HTML5 APIs will be used.
If I interpreted your problem statement correctly, I believe what you are looking for is access to device native services - camera & gallery - from your mobile website.
A solution that fits your design requirements is for the browser to provide such services. Unfortunately WebKit and other browsers limit such support to things like Geoposition.
The way for Cordova to help you here is if your mobile website is an stand alone HTML5/CSS/JS application that can use CORS XHR or WebSockets to communicate with webindependent Web Services.
If you can bottle your website into a set of static html/js/css files that display content from dynamic web services then you are set. That same javascript can then call navigator.camera.getPicture(success, fail, options) and file-transfer the result to a waiting web service.
That camera api is not available to the InAppBrowser just as it is not available to WebKit Chrome/Safari/Edge. Trying to control the Mobile App via the InAppBrowser is most likely to fail due to security constraints.
What you might get away with is re-imaging your browser application as a series of discrete services that return raw html snippets suited for a new mobile app. Then write your Cordova app as the top level container that manages the navigation amongst the html snippets. This server-side rendering would be most useful if it was significantly challenging enough to overwhelm the mobile platform / web services pattern (think custom video server or expert system).
#Jakub,
Cedric has essentially stated it plainly. I will restate. You understanding about Cordova/Phonegap is not correct.
From: Top Mistakes by Developers new to Cordova/Phonegap
You have hit issue #5.
I QUOTE:
From Phonegap FAQ
A PhoneGap application may only use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, you can make use of network protocols (XmlHTTPRequest, Web Sockets, etc) to easily communicate with backend services written in any language. This allows your PhoneGap app to remotely access existing business processes while the device is connected to the Internet.
In addition, Apple frowns on using apps as wrappers for websites.
Quote Apple iTunes Guidelines - 2.12
Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as Apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
To be clear, your idea may be valid, but you will likely need to rethink your internal workflow. You likely want to keep the same UI and UX.
I have a website/web app which I want to make available on mobile devices.
The website is responsive and can be used inthe mobile browser, but I want to make it available on google play / app store. My question is: how could I create a simple app that is actually a browser, which would run natively on the phone but load my web page in full screen?
Any simple solutions or frameworks?
Well there are different approaches to solve your questions I am trying to give you some rough idea with following two approaches.
Easy and simple one
1) Use web views and call home page url that's all.
For better performance.
2) Create a REST apis with only required data for your mobile app . And then use either web view or create your own views and show it to user . In this case if you create your native view then app will perform faster but development will take time.
I have a web application that is optimized for mobile viewing, so that it can be used on all smartphones (Android, iPhone, etc).
The development of the web application is nearing completion, but I would also like to have an actual downloadable app that users can put on their phones. All this app would do is literally point to the web application and ask them to log in.
Is this something that can be easily done, or will I need to develop full fledged Android and iPhone applications separately that interact with my web app somehow?
Thanks in advance.
PhoneGap is a tool that essentially will do what you are asking out of the box. If you are somewhat familiar with native development, you can also create a simple app where the main view is a web browser (see WebView (Android) or UIWebView (iOS)).
Try this.
Create apps from any web content.