I have a HTML page with a Download app button. When clicked by an iOS user, it redirect the users to the App Store via itms-services. The link I used here is:
window.location.replace("itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/app/id578505616");
It looks like so on a mobile browser:
Facebook/Pinterest has an in-app browser which asks for the user's consent before redirect the user out of their app in the form of an Alert box with Cancel or Open app, which Open app opens the external link. It looks like this:
It looks like this with the Alert box:
Assuming the user is using an iOS device. The expected behavior here is when the Open app button is clicked, the user gets redirected to the App Store app. However, we are seeing about a 10 seconds delay before the actual redirection happens.
See videos below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dgh7v-IsK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LFHeRnBFgg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Y-kj-pMyw
Notes:
I can't seem to reproduce this at all times. It is only reproducible sometimes. Sorry!
Once a device is delayed for the first time, all subsequent links to AppStores will be fast, until roughly 1 day late. Rebooting the phone and/or clearing the browser cache and/or reinstall Facebook/Pinterest does not help reproducing this.
I tried to replace the itms-apps:// link with https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trusper-tips-tutorials-how/id578505616?mt=8, but we were still experiencing the delay from time to time.
The delay seems to be exactly 10 seconds.
Why does this delay occur? This seems like a bad user experience.
My current theory is that the problem is on the Apple side. The reason being, once the Open app button is clicked, it is out of the hand of our website, as well as Facebook/Pinterest app. I presume, once the button is clicked, iOS is handling the actual context switch from one app to another. Therefore, it suggests that either the system call actually opening the URL is hanging, or the system call opening the App Store app is?? However, I haven't been able to prove either one to be true or false. Does anyone have a better explanation?
[Edit 04/02/2015]
I can confirm this problem still exists as of today on my phone (iPhone 5S w/ iOS 8.2).
I did some further research and found this article which I think is suggesting that this is a iOS system-related bug: OpenUrl freezes app for over 10 seconds
As there is no proper documentation on how it works, it is hard to pinpoint the cause of it.
Let me advance a theory.
Opening an app from browser causes a context switch; indeed from browser to App Store. So for the very first time it'd cost some time, while in subsequent times it will open faster as it will get opened from cache.
If you consider AppStore uses Keep-alive connection between iOS AppStore in device and iOS AppStore Server for the first time socket opening in server would seem higher than the subsequent times as subsequent request would reuse the same connection.
If the app is removed from the cache then it'd again take some time for the app to open and there would be a little network delay as the app would have lost the cookie for keep-alive connection then the app would have to endure the socketing opening cost.
There are also other factors like Safari hanging, resulting in some delay. You can read how Safari can be messed up here.
iOS doesn't have garbage collection, only things like ARC (Automatic Reference Counting). Each has its own advantages and drawbacks. Sometimes these drawbacks can surface and cause some problem; nothing is to be ruled out. For example a memory leak or app-crash might leave dangling pointers.
Technically, using itms-apps should give a little advantage over plain iTunes url because itms-apps should narrow down the search; itms-apps mean iTunes Music Store-apps.
A plain iTunes URL may be a Book (iBook), Music (iTunes), App (Appstore), etc ... so iOS might have to decide which app to launch.
I hope this helps.
Related
Apple rejected our app with the following response:
We noticed an issue in your app that contributes to a lower quality user experience than Apple users expect:
- Upon launching the app, a web page in mobile Safari opens first, then returns to the app. The user should be able to use the app immediately upon launch.
Next Steps
To resolve this issue, please revise your app to address all instances of this type of issue.
The app we're developing is a keyboard extension. The use-cases do not require a user to actually open the app and use it. As a result, in the app itself (should you launch it from home/springboard), we redirect the user to our website, which informs the user how to use the product (there's no registration or immediate tutorial required, but we certainly cant have the app do absolutely nothing). From Apple's response, this clearly isn't the right way. My questions:
If a user were to be redirected to Messages, could this solve the problem? The reason I ask this instead of just trying it is so that I dont waste time and end up getting rejected again.
Part of the problem seems that opening the app through springboard is misleading since it doesnt do anything. But my understanding is that we cannot have apps without icons (Create iOS app without menu icon). Do keyboard apps need to be published differently so that we dont have an icon in springboard? If so, please direct me to some documentation/Xcode configuration/resources to achieve this.
This is my first attempt at mobile development
The answer provided by #particleman was the right one. Just loading a WebView within the app was enough for Apple to accept the app.
This is the first time I upload an app to apple app store. After weeks for reviewing, finally, I get my app listed on apple app store. But the problem is, now seems like my app app-store page is only viewable from iTunes. When I try to open it in a browser, it will shows "Connecting to the iTunes Store...". Why is it my app can't be the view from the browser? Why did another app can? How to fix it?
Short answer: It seems, you cannot fully predict the behavior of an app store link for a certain user. You being redirected doesn't mean other people will be redirected right away as well. Your app's country/language availability, users' app store region and language settings, the specificity of the app store link (which has optional components and alternative styles), and the browser cache all seem to have a say.
Added details: After experimenting with this a lot, it seems to me that the behavior of the link (or rather the response from the Apple server to requesting it) depends on the language/country version being requested, my own current country/language defined in iTunes/my app store account, plus some caching issues. So, whether a preview page is shown in the browser, or iTunes is attempted to be opened right away depends on several factors and doesn't always have the same result (for different users). In fact, two consecutive attempts to open the same URL can have different redirect behavior.
I noticed that a full app store link like https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keynote/id361285480 more likely leads to the preview web page, if the app is available in the language/country referenced ("us" in the example) and there is no prior request cached in which I clicked through to the app in iTunes. If the app isn't available in the referenced location, or any other information is missing in the link for the Apple server to identify a particular language version on the preview website, or there is cached data that makes Apple confident enough to redirect you to iTunes directly (or it's Friday 13th and the moon is right behind the sun by pure chance...) then you may see a redirect instead.
For posting app store links in the likes of Facebook, Apple's app linker seems to produce URLs with the nicest preview snippets (and not: "Connecting to the iTunes store"), when putting in the right country. So, these generated URLs seem to be most complete/specific.
If your app is intended for a specific region, AppStore connect will still give you a URL with .../us/... in it. Changing it to the respective local region seems to fix the problem for me.
For an example,
given URL: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yourcompany/id123456
If the app is for Norway region, change the URL to: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/yourcompany/id123456
We have developed a mobile application in cordova, after undergoing the application on Apple store 20 days again later, we received a communication in which Apple refuses to submit our application for the following reasons:
Reasons :
10.6: Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good, it may be rejected
----- 10.6 -----
We found the following issues with the user interface of your app:
Specifically, there were no back buttons on social media web views displayed in the app. In order to return to the main app from a community page, such as Facebook or Twitter, the app had to be closed and re-launched.
These examples identify types of issues discovered in your app but may not represent all such issues. It would be appropriate to thoroughly evaluate your app to address these types of issues.
In fact we use links to our pages on social networks, it works well on Android, because it simply click the back button to return the phone. Thing that is not obvious on an iPhone.
Is there a method to solve this? A webview? a popup with a close button ? an HTML5 iframe ?
THANK YOU !
You can use official InAppBrowser plugin (it should have a close button x), or just open these links externally in browser (safari).
In addition, IMHO, you are risking to lose your precious users by opening social links on top of your (or inside) your own app. People can get distracted and just browse away.
2nd update, March 2014: Apple closed the bug saying they don't have enough information, but my project is a big PHP application that I can't (and won't) fully send to Apple for them to reproduce this problem. If anyone has a shareable, simple, pure HTML app that exhibits this problem as well, please let me know and I'll submit it to re-open the bug hoping they'll look into it.
1st update: as more users are reporting this issue and nobody has a clue, I have filed a bug report at Apple. If anything useful comes out of that which is not under NDA, I will post it here.
After installing a (jQuery Mobile) web app I am developing to the home screen of my iOS 6 device (iPhone 5), the network activity indicator in the status bar at the top of the screen keeps spinning even after the page is loaded completely. The behavior shows only when the page is opened through the web app; surfing to the same page in Safari on the same device doesn't show the infinitely spinning activity indicator.
Removing all AJAX calls and page content doesn't make a difference; the problem persists even when the web app consists only of an empty page like this:
<html>
<head></head>
<body><br/></body>
</html>
The issue was solved by deleting the web app from the home screen, surfing to the page in Safari and re-adding it to the home screen as a new web app.
My guess is that the problem lies in the meta data that iOS stores at the moment a web app is added to the home screen (such as the values in the apple-mobile-web-app-capable and apple-touch-startup-image meta tags).
At least some of that information does not seem to get refreshed when accessing the page as a web app, even when it starts serving completely different content (such as the empty page shown in the question). I know this is true for the apple-mobile-web-app-capable meta tag; adding that tag to a site that has already been installed to the home screen does not suddenly make it a native-looking web app; the tag has to be present at the moment of adding the web app to the home screen.
I think I must have installed the initial web app at a stage of development where the page referred to a non-existent resource (such as an image, CSS or JS file), resulting in a web app that keeps looking for non-existent content even though the current web page is no longer referring to it, possibly explaining the infinite activity indicator behavior.
I am not certain that that is the cause, but it does seem the most likely explanation for this issue.
If you encounter this; check that all resources your page refers to exist, then delete and re-add the web app to the screen to see if it fixes the issue.
I have the exact same issue, and it goes away when I remove the bookmark from the homescreen. But the activity indicator starts spinning again after the webapp has been used for some time.
I don't see any failed requests in Apaches access log during initial load, and no requests appears when the activity indicator starts spinning, so I don't think the problem is about a non-existent resource.
However, I see in the access log that iOS Safari insists on requesting a whole batch of Apple-specific files such as apple-startup-image and apple-startup-icon when in full screen mode. This is just like how Google Chrome insists on requesting favicon.ico (sigh!). Sadly, when I satisfy Safaris thirst for apple-files it doesn't stop the spinning disc :-(
I have had the Mac OSX web inspector enabled for my webapp and it registers no network activity or other issues whatsoever.
In the Apple manual (http://support.apple.com/manuals/) page 12 for the iPad it states that the activity indicator is for "network and other activity". It doesn't say that Safari uses the indicator for anything else but network activity, but maybe it's a hint.
For the time being, I have come the temporary and unsatisfying conclusion that it's an iOS issue that's beyond web developer control. I'll keep hacking at it and post any new findings here. Perhaps together we can uncover the mystery :-)
I am really stuck on this problem and I need your help!
I'm doing an ipad game with unity and the social network plugin from prime31.
The situation:
When you arrive to the end of level, the game gives you your score and ask if you want to submit it to facebook. If you do, In my script I've done a system that checks if you are logged in, if you aren't it ask you to login and then the system checks if the app has the publish permissions and if not it ask you the permission. If all theses if are true it posts a message to your wall straight. So hopefully the login/asking part needs to be done only once.
The problem:
When the ipad swap between the game and the facebook app to login, the ipad shutdown the game for saving memory. I've tried to reduce the scene, but it's hard to reduce it more than it is. So I thought maybe I should open that facebook login and authorisation inGame. For that I tried working with this:
setSessionLoginBehavior(FacebookSessionLoginBehavior.ForcingWebView);
And it does exactly what I want, it opens a small window in game, doesn't crash all good really. But the problem, in this solution, is that it only works for the login, and when I ask the publish permission it switches back to the facebook app to ask the permission and therefore crashes.
After more research, it seems that it's not doable to control the ask permission behavior.
So back to square one, how can I prevent IOS to shutdown my game while the user connects to facebook. I'm still looking to reduce the scene.
I heard of using the app url and sending data for the app (my game) launch after leaving the facebook app and therefore ask the ipad to relaunch the app at a specific scene. But that would be really the last solution because it's going to take a lot of rework to make that happened.
If you have another suggestions to work around this problem I'm up for it. All I need is login -> ask for publish permissions -> post and come back to the end of level screen of my game.
Thanks for the help
Put simply, once your app is backgrounded, if iOS wants to shut it down, you can't prevent that from happening.
The best thing you can do is save the state of your app before handing over to the facebook app for the authentication side of things, and then reload your state when the app starts up again. You'll want to handle applicationWillResignActive:, applicationDidEnterBackground:, applicationDidBecomeActive: and applicationWillBecomeActive:.
The App States and Multitasking section of the iOS App Programming Guide explains how you can do this.
I think you should check for FBDialog for iOS 5 and beneath. And FBNativeDialogs for iOS 6.
These will pop a window on the top of your app, so I guess it will still be running. And for iOS 6's FBNativeDialogs
Provides methods to display native (i.e., non-Web-based) dialogs to
the user. Currently the iOS 6 sharing dialog is supported.