I'm trying to open a YouTube playlist from a tabBar, allow the user to play a video, but I want the user to be able to pause the video, go back to the app and resume to the video when they re-open that tab.
Is this possible in SFSafariView or UIWebView?
First, UIWebView has been deprecated so you should look into WKWebView.
The main difference between SFSafariViewController and WKWebView is how much control you want to keep on the web experience.
From Apple Guideline Should I use WKWebView or SFSafariViewController for web views in my app?, you can use SFSafariViewController when you want Safari web experience embedded within your app. Although you'll have a very limited control of it: caching or user session isn't part of it. That being said, if the web page handles an authentication system with user session, you could potentially recover it using ASWebAuthenticationSession.
On the other side, WKWebView allows you much more customisation and hands on for the web session and navigation. This is probably what you're looking for if you want to keep control of user's navigation.
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I am building a mobile web app that will integrate with a live video stream. The streaming stuff is all handled by a third party so I don't need to worry about that aspect.
What I get from the third party is an iFrame/video element to drop onto the page. I am curious if there is a way to have this video play in the background while the user can interact with a UI over top.
I am aware of the limitations involving mobile browsers and autoplay, so I know that at the very least the user will need to initiate an action. I am just worried that the native video player will pop up and the UI will be hidden beneath it.
So my primary question would be is this even possible?
A little google search would have given you an answer
http://thenewcode.com/777/Create-Fullscreen-HTML5-Page-Background-Video
When I go to m.youtube.com on my iPhone (Chrome) to watch videos, I assume that YouTube is using the HTML5 <video> tag to display them.
However, when I watch a video with a commercial, dragging the seek button makes it jump back to it's original position before the seek. In other words, it is impossible to control your position in the commercial.
It feels like a violation of the divide between browser content and the browser. This isn't a native app, it is a website. How are the iOS video control elements being manipulated by HTML? It seems that this should be impossible, just like it should be impossible for a webpage to access a phone's photos or switch applications.
If it's running inline in the browser, the site will have full script access to the controls - and it's very standard nowadays to prevent skipping/changing the playhead during ads. Some even get rid of the controls completely.
Though HTML5 video is a native browser function, it's still subject to javascript hooks. All one has to do is add return false to the onChangePlayhead event to lock the controls down. It's only when you remove the video from inline web and bring it into the native iOS app that it becomes untouchable by scripts.
Is it possible to embed a Vimeo video in an iOS app using a UIButton instead of doing it using a UIWebView?
My idea is to click an UIButton to play a Vimeo video in-app, without launching Safari.
Is it possible to start a video by click of a UIButton - yes.
Is it possible to embed a video in UIButton - no. Video still needs to be hosted within a UIWebView.
Hosting UIWebView in an app is not the same as starting Safari. UIWebView is a part of your app, Safari is a whole another app. You have complete control over what's going on inside a UIWebView.
There's a Vimeo app on the store and an API plus its documentation on Vimeo.com. The last time I checked third parties weren't able and allowed to embed the clips directly in the App since they don't have access to th mp4 files on Vimeos content delivery network.
But Vimeo itself does, so if you know what you're doing you can come up with the idea to monitor Vimeos app network traffic and reverse engineer how they access the mp4s. But before you do that, you probably better contact their support.
The organization I work for has created an interactive YouTube video in which you can navigate around to other YouTube videos by clicking links within the video - sort of like a choose your own adventure type deal.
Anyway, I was working on a web page that references this video and I'd like to embed the video directly on the page.
The interactive portions actually work while the video is embedded, but unlike how it works when playing on YouTube, the url doesn't actually change and the back button is therefore non-functional.
So if I choose a path and determine that's not where I want to go, the only way to get back would be to reload the entire page and start from the beginning.
I'm guessing my best choice here is to just go ahead and link this off to YouTube, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing an obvious easy way to embed this video on the page and keep the back button functionality that's possible when the video plays on YouTube.
Thanks for your time!
I am writing a web app that uses HTML5 audio. I want to make sure that the user can move to a different application while still listening to the audio in the background. This works while the web app is still within Safari itself. However, when the user adds the web app to their homescreen and it has been set to allow for fullscreen access (no Safari toolbars), when they leave the app the audio does not continue to play. Does anyone know of any way to have a web app proceed while in the background?
Thanks.
I observe exactly the same thing. It's really puzzling as to why Safari, webkit on iOS I suppose really, handles it differently in the two cases.
I notice one thing that might be a small clue, when running as a home-screen'ed 'app' when you playback the audio the iOS status bar (at least on my ios4.1/iphone4) does NOT show playback indicator (blue triangle). But when using the site directly via Safari (and the sound stays in the backgroun as expected) it DOES show the playback indicator.
I think the only people who can probably answer your question are apple since it's their webkit implementation. If you haven't already I would urge you to take this up on the apple developer message boards.
For others not familiar the 'full screen access' Dan is referring to is a Safari specific meta tag that enables a bookmarked web page to open in safari 'full screen' without the location and menu bars.
While HTML5 is making progress on supporting device native features through HTML 5 APIs (such as accelerometers, etc) having true background audio seems like it hasn't really been spec'ed out yet. By background I mean when the browser is not the application that the user is currently focused on. It was only more recently that iOS even supported application multitasking which is what making the behavior from safari possible but it's a separate thing together to integrate that tightly with the OS'es native audio control features, which is what would need to happen.
This is not possible, at least not currently. You are playing the audio from the browser and when the browser closes the system kills the app, or freezes it, unless it has multi-tasking support(but that isn't allowed for web apps)
In iOS 5 and Android 4.0.3, putting a browser window to background does not stop playback. I am not sure about other versions prior to them.
You can do so with an iPhone 4. On my website, I posted a song with the simple html5 tag and I went on it with the iPhone 4. Played the song, left the app. Song runs in the background and there is even a play button on the top bar like when you listen to music on the iPod app.