There are 2 web views API in Corona SDK, for displaying website within the App which uses the SDK. From the documentation, I know that NewWebView supports loading local web pages, but have quite a lot of known issues ( such as unable to roate in Android, cannot fire loaded event in iOS , etc ). Besides that, if I just want to load a simple web page ( CSS, images & texts only ) online ( on remote web server ), which library should I use ?
Note: the App will support iOS & Android OS
Documentation:
native.WebView
native.NewWebView
Actually the docs for native.WebView describes the object returned by calling native.newWebView(). They are in fact the same. One doc describes calling newWebView to create the webView, the other describes what you can do with the webView.
Related
The mobile app interface implemented via Gluon must be written in JavaFX, this is not our option, as we need to use HTML/JavaScript/CSS/Reactjs to build the interface.
So I am trying to create an webview (either UIWebView or WKWebView for iOS) in Gluon, so I can load the offline HTML asset, and then I am trying to use the method as described here (https://medium.com/#sreeharikv112/communication-from-webview-to-native-ios-android-app-6d842cefe02d) to communicate between webview and native code (Java by Gluon).
But I can't find any guide to do so in Gluon API, is that possible? How can I achieve that?
Alright after some time, I have figured out how to achieve this.
Previously I was in wrong direction, checking through all Gluon Charm-down/Attach service to look for the WebView wrapper but couldn't find.
Then I realise the WebView implementation was provided in JavaFX Port, which mean we can use JavaFX in normal way (like how we do in JavaFX desktop), so we can setup the bridge as per usual and communicate between javascript and Java.
Internally, it is using iOS UIWebView for the implementation, it is not the rework of the JavaFX WebView.
We are looking at transferring our web-based app from Naurtech CETerm to Rhomobile. We can change javascript functions/meta tags to use the methods of Rhomobile instead of CETerm, but due to the poor hardware performance of our devices the slow down caused by the overhead of loading jQuery and other files is significant. (Prior to this we had no requirement for jQuery, although it would have been nice to have it). We also now need the rhoapi javascript which is significant.
Is there a way to include these "framework" javascript files in the Rhomobile container app and have them available to all pages loaded without them needing to be re-parsed on each page load?
It is currently a web based app loaded using something like the following in our rhoconfig.txt file as opposed to a local file:
start_path = 'http://xxxxxx.co.uk/login.php'
My current understanding is that this means the app/layout.erb file cannot be used to solve this problem?
Thanks
More than RhoMobile Suite (and it's RhoElements enterprise device framework) you can take a look at Zebra Technologies' Enterprise Browser that is intended to be used as a stand-alone industrial browser, targeting Windows Mobile/Windows CE and Android devices manufactured by Motorola Solutions (now Zebra Technologies).
On "not too old" Windows CE/ Windows Mobile devices Zebra's Enterprise Browser uses a webkit derived HTML5 capable renderer engine so, to answer your question, you can use HTML5 application cache to download the JavaScript libraries only if there's an update, in this way you can remove any network delay.
I've seen some project using giant JavaScript files (well above 1MB compressed) on old WinCE 6.0 devices, the startup time is clearly the biggest problem, with the risk to look at a white page for 5-7s. This can be alleviated with an async loader and a splash screen. It's not going to make your page faster, but the user will know what is going on.
You can find more information about Enterprise Browser on Zebra Technologies developer website, the Launchpad, inside Enterprise Browser area.
If you build your custom RhoMobile web-app container with the idea to use in server pages, local resources, you can hit some issues around cross-site scripting prevention policies.
I have a site which uses microsoft mvc 3 on the server side, jQuery Mobile on the client side and I want to combine it with PhoneGap and produce executes for Android and iOS.
Is it possible?
How?
Thanks
Yes, it is possible.
If you must use Phonegap, there are a couple of things to do:
First, you must create a project corresponding to each platform , following these instructions. Once you do that, you basically copy all the client side code (js, html, css) to the www folder of your project. This is one of the reasons, the app could load faster, since it's reading its resources from the local filesystem, and not receiving them from an http connection each time.
Second, you must find a way to provide your server side data to your app. If you are already using REST services or RPC methods to populate your website, then that's done, but if not, you must start by building them, and then calling them from your client (through ajax calls from jQUery most likely), and then rendering them through javascript (you can use the multiple templating libraries out there or just plain javascript, I recommend the latter only if the UI updates are minimal).
As you can see, the second part requires quite a little bit more work. Especially if you haven't built web services before.
The other option ,which does not require phonega/cordova is to use an embedded webview. Then you wouldn't have to do anything. It would work similarly to a browser (Loading the remote URL of your site), with the added advantage of being inside and android/ios app, and you could add other views or communicate with the embedded webview using native code. If you are planning to load html files from the filesystem and not from your server, you would have to do the same thing you have to do with phonegap.
It happened to me, if you have a web app depending on server code I would go with a WebView based app, and not a Cordova app.
It's really simple to create those webviews apps for Android or IPhone.
Here you have an example for building a webview based app on android
Here you have an example for building a webview based app on IOS
Hope it helps.
If you want to reuse your site you'll need a webview that browses it.
Phonegap wouldn't be needed if you use this approach, but the application will not be as responsive as a native app, and the IPhone moderators may reject your app for that reason (it happened to me).
Another approach would be that you recreate your site as a pure Javascript application and only communicate with your servers to execute some REST Services. In this case Apache Cordova makes sense.
I've created one Jquery mobile mvc4 web application using webapi support, which is well looking site in almost all mobile device as well. but now i want to convert this MVC application to phonegap to use mobile feature supports like camera,accelerometer,sound etc..
What is the best way to start converting it to phonegap, will i need to create SOAP based web-Service for webapi code. I've searched on web regarding that but not getting enough help,support.
am i going right way ? or need something else ?
any help is appreciable.
Okay so in order to convert it first you are going to have to know Objective-C because that is the only language that is allowed on the iPhone but assuming you know that here are the steps you can take in making a conversion like that.
*Make sure that any outside information the application retrieves is either a) In a REST api you can use the new WebApi in fact I am using it right now and it works like a charm. Or b) Any script src= tags are converted to local files on disk. So if you had script src="My awesome css" make that file a local file on the phone.
*Next take any views and decide where all of their API calling code is. Make not of that and then get ready to be moving that code.
*Once that is all recorded startup a phonegap project and get rid of any extra .index files or anything you don't need.
*Create your applications PhoneGap plugin. Have the OBjective-C plugin make any API calls that you will be needing and then make the javascript plugin match the objective-C function.
*Where you had any calls in your previous views, make those now call the cordova (PhoneGap) plugin.
This is a very brief roadmap to get started.
Once the tediousness is over it is worth it though. I moved my IOS application to Android and they transfer pretty easy.
Cheers
I'm looking into using PhoneGap for an iOS app so that I can utilize the camera API. The plan is to use Rails to manage the entire experience. At this point, I'm not particularly concerned about performance. If it wasn't for the need for the camera, I would simply design it as a true web app.
Most of the answers and tutorials I have found suggest using ajax to the backend server to render the frontend. At this point in the app development, I'm not sure I want to build so much of the view in JS and would prefer to use Rails to render the views. I have seen a few very brief references to use PhoneGap as a container to literally render the Rails app. Performance aside, is this possible and how would I set up the core html file in PhoneGap to let the mobile app run normally?
I do not believe such a container exists to run on the client side but it is possible to dynamically serve a PhoneGap app (i.e. the app acts as a web browser with native functionality available via javascript commands).
Here is code which demonstrate exactly what you are describing.
Here is a screen cast I did associated with demo.
NOTE: The demo is using an out 3.2.1, and is broken as of the latest version Xcode and/or PhoneGap but it is possible, and apps of this nature are valid in the the various app stores, (Linkedin alongwith many others are already doing it.) The logic is there I just haven't had the time to fix the bug with the new version of Xcode, or update the PhoneGap code (doing the update may actually fix the bug in one quick work session).
Maybe you can also check my example app that is exported to Phoengap. It doesn't use camera but it is possible to combine native parts with Phonegap.
https://github.com/joscas/base_app/tree/devel (currently in the devel branch for the exportable version)
Life deploy: https://starter-app-staging.herokuapp.com (the desktop version)
It is based on rails / ember.js plus with token authentication (ember-auth) + OAuth (Google, LinkedIn,..) and Devise.
It uses the (phonegap-rails) gem I've created to export assets, fix paths etc.