For my question, time is more important than perfection. I need any advice you can quickly give me about embedding a video in a mobile website which is targeted for Android devices. Since I have only very little time for research (for the first research, only today, but of course the implementation will follow later), I need any advice you can give to me, no matter how vague or imperfect it may be.
Here is the scenario:
A video must be embedded in a mobile website, using HTML.
Only Android clients are relevant, because iPhones and non-Android devices will be directed to another URL.
Preferably, the video should be integrated into the rest of the web page. In case an external player needs to be opened, it would be preferable if that player has a "return to web page" button of some kind that will return the user to the web page.
The customer is aware that this will not work perfectly on all devices, but we want to find a solution that works well at least on the more modern devices.
If you have any experience regarding this field, please let me know of it. Here are some areas that might be helpful:
HTML code that you have found to be working
Encoding specifics regarding the video (e.g. which codecs to use or not to use)
Other StackOverflow questions regarding this topic which I have overseen in my haste (sorry about that, time is sparse for me right now)
Since I can only choose one of the replies to be the answer, my choice for that has to be very arbitrary.
So far, I have found these two other StackOverflow questions, which cover parts of this topic:
What video format will play on all Android devices?
Embed video and play on android
What about embedding flash? Not all android devices have it but the ones have it should be able to play properly encoded mp4 video
For video encoding check http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html
Related
I searched many documents but didn't find any exact solution for my problem. I want to implement audio call and screen sharing in Android native application using webrtc without using any third party sdk.
I found one demo example i.e apprtc but it supports only audio call. How to implement screen sharing too?
This answer may be irrelevant for the OP, since the question is very old.
Anyway, for anyone in the future searching for something similar, check this commit in webrtc repo. It adds a screen capturer for Android.
I work at a large company that is looking at building apps for internal use only (iPhone/iPad). We are looking for a SIMPLE way of creating apps that essentially are just a web browser with a predefined URL and no address bar/tabs, etc. Essentially a very dumbed down browser with a custom logo. What is the easiest way to accomplish this?
We would obviously be distributing these oursevlves and they wouldn't be available in the App Store, so app guidelines aren't an issue. We are on Windows boxes and are Java/Web developers so we'd rather not get into too much C sharp if at all possible, fyi. Basically it'd be nice if the tool (if one exists), were to allow us to give it a URL, an icon image, and it builds the app from there.
And while we are starting out with Apple devices, we need to be cross platform compliant with whatever tools we use because I can imagine the day when they decide to buy Android or WindowsPhone devices later on.
MobiOne? PhoneGap? Appcelerator Titanium SDK? Can either of these do what we need? Something else?
A big 'No' for MobiOne. I bought it for 99 dollars. As they advertised, I was able to create a static app within hours. But that's pretty much what MobiOne can do. The moment you start using html, javascript or even audio, all sorts of problem seem to creep up. And there is no support in their forums either. My basic question about using the audio player remains unanswered for a month now.
Here is the worst part:
The tool has a poorly built emulator. Often times, my app worked fine in the emulator but failed to run when deployed to a real device. And at times, i have seen the vice versa too.
Since then, I switched over to PhoneGap(which is free). It took me 2 days to just set my environment right. But once I had the environment setup, it took only minutes to deploy my app in to a virtual device.
Looking at your requirement, I would say that your safe bet is PhoneGap.
I don't have a working knowledge in Titanium but I read in a lot of forums that it supports less platforms when compared to PhoneGap. Titanium seems to give a more native feel to the app but that also means you cannot port it to multiple platforms without changing the code.
Apple may reject your app if all it does is wrap a web site in a WebView. You need to have more functionality in your app than just loading a web page.
From the app review guidelines for iOS:
2.12 Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
You would need to add additional screens to the app like an about page and a contact us page in order for your app not to be rejected.
As you say you know JavaScript, look into appcelerator.com it allows you to build cross platform apps and only writing your code once.
I would re-evaluate your reason for wanting to create these projects as an app in the first place. What app functionality do you want that you don't have now with your web page? You didn't mention anything in your question that would indicate this needs to be an app.
On Apple devices, you could create an icon that points to a web site. You could define the pages in a way that hides the address bar. Lastly, the web pages could easily be cross-platform already.
Wrapping this into an app would just possibly complicate the process. You may need to deploy updated app code to the device, where a refresh in a browser works just as well.
I'm thinking about making a mobile game (say something like Wordfeud).
Now I would like to publish this game on Android, iOS, WindowsPhone, facebook and normal browser.
I could go native on all these platforms.
BUT
Since a want it to be a multiplayer game, most of the functionality will be done via a c#.NET webservice with SOAP calls or something.
Now for another project i'm make a mobile website working in WebView (android) and the same website already works in an IOS app.
So.. why not make a jQuery/HTML5/.NET mobile website and some small apps just as a shell to get them in the marketplaces. That way everything will be in one place and updates/bugfixes will be a walk in the park.
What do you think?
Cheers
If you check the Apple Review Guidelines, you could see :
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
You will be able to launch your android one, but you may have your iOS web bundle rejected.
I suggest to have a look to this page before posting to the app store
I think there are a lot of problems with this. If you look at tools that try too help you do this kind of thing, the most powerful ones being Google PlayN and Monkey. There are still a lot of semantic differences between a HTML/Flash/SilverLight game and a Mobile one, The most obvious being differences in input devices and screen resolution sizes.
It's also important to realize that the cost of integrating the different platforms (ie facebook vs. non-facbook, depending on what type of game you're making) may be significant.
Google PlayN: http://code.google.com/p/playn/
Monkey: http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/
I think that there are 3 things I always see in html5 apps :
-very bad integration to the different platforms
-bad performances, web based is way slower than native.
-nightmare to maintain.
I strongly encourage you to go the native way if you want to do a quality app.
HTML5 is not all wrong. I think it is the right choice if there are big time/budget constraints and/or you don't care about the quality of the app (for exemple if it will be only used internally).
Final thought : why SOAP ?? REST is faster and is not harder to implement.
I read an interesting article about Web-to-App interoperability. It states:
Android and iOS allow installed applications to respond to custom URIs
from the web. Since I’m not as familiar with iOS, I will only cover
how Android allows this to work, and how you can use this technique to
your advantage. There are several use cases for allowing your app to
handle custom URIs. The first one I’ll cover is simply launching your
application.
Basically, a link (clicked on a mobile browser) can trigger a specific action with an installed App.
I found it intriguing and I realized that the Google Play Market itself works the same way with market:// links.
My question is:
Can you provide (other) live examples in Android? And in Iphone?
I'm looking for good cases of this kind of "Web to App Interoperability" with both Android and Iphone applications.
Extra question:
Can you suggest a tutorial or reference to do this in Iphone?
Thank you very much.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
For the extra question, have a look here or here.
I know Spotify uses this. I believe Facebook does too.
I am trying to work on an app that streams videos from a website into an app. So, it's like watching those videos in the app, not the website. How would you do this? Can someone point me to a tutorial or explain it to me?
Well depends on what framework you are developing for. You need to provide more info if you want real answers.
For example, if you are using the native sdk to develop for the playbook (C/C++), info regarding streaming video can be found here:
https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/native/documentation/video_playback_overview_1935223_11.html
May not be for streaming specifically, but its a start.
If you are developing and AIR application (Flex), well then thats library question. Just off the top of my head, you would probably use the NetStream class. Documentation found here:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/net/NetStream.html
Again, need more info to give you a good answer.