I'm new to mobile programming. Recently my company has looked into creating a specific application for tablets (Android and iOS). So it was assigned to me to develop a thin-client based around using HTML5 for what we need to do.
Essentially the application allows a user to fill in a custom-designed form (which the user can build themselves, or pull down a predefined template from our server). This form is built using HTML5, Javascript, JQuery, etc. Some additional functionality is planned, such as being able to take a picture using the native device and attach it to the form that we send back to our server for storage (once we figure out how to do it in iOS. We've already done it in Android.)
However, I noticed the following on Apple's App Store Guidelines, under the Functionality section. Item 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
Can someone explain, or at least direct me to clarification of this when using the UIWebView construct? This application at its core is pretty much just HTML5. While it might have some additional bells and whistles, does this mean that if we try to submit this (when its completed) to Apple, that they will simply reject it out of hand? Implementing the majority of it in HTML5 was done purposely so we wouldn't have to re-code everything from device to device (and we will also embed it in one of our products, so if they want to fill it out on the desktop while in our system, they can.)
Any guidance would be appreciated, or even suggestions of where this question should be asked if SO is not the proper forum for it. Thanks again.
The key in the Appstore guideline is the word "simply":
Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as
Apps
If you keep a balance between locally stored and remote HTML content for your webviews Apple would not look at the app as a hollow shell pulling in remote content.
Related
i am in the process of making my app with firebase i am pretty much done with that except Firebase App Indexing. I am very exited with this feature because it could help me to increase my app get more traffic from the web but the problem is i really can't able to see how to implement this. According to Firebase Docs i just need to register my app with this pice of code
[[FIRAppIndexing sharedInstance] registerApp:your Apple ID from iTunes Connect];
I have done that but what should i do after that?
1.My app is firebase app that means i don't have any website to host my content except firebase realtime database. Does my content is available for crawlers? if not how can i make available to them?
2.If i can able to show my content in the google search results i don't wanna show all the content and i wanna show just some of my content for example i have a social app for sharing General Knowledge questions, i wanna show just the question like "What is the highest mountain" in the search results and if the user want to see the answer it should take them to my app how can i do that?
3.As per docs i came to know that i need to create univiersal links for my app content to direct users from google search but how shold i do that ? Lets say should i crate universal links when the user create question?? if so how can i do that ??
Thank you very much for the help.
This is not currently possible on iOS using Firebase App Indexing. The situation is slightly different on Android, but that is not applicable to your question.
On iOS, Firebase App Indexing is simply highlighting pages on your website in Google search results that have corresponding content inside your app. This is achieved by piggybacking on Apple's Universal Links standard, and there is no proactive 'crawling' going on inside your app. This means unless you have a corresponding web page for your app with 1:1 content parity, you can't really benefit from Firebase App Indexing on iOS as it comes out-of-the-box.
The best workaround is to generate little 'placeholder pages' for every piece of content in your app, which the sole purpose of opening your app (if it is installed) or redirecting to the App Store (if it is not installed). Ideally you'll need some sort of deferred deep linking system so that users still see the correct content after downloading. Fun fact: this is essentially how HotelTonight operates their entire business model. Unfortunately Firebase's implementation is not mature enough to support this full flow, and Google hasn't quite figured out how to rank app-only content properly yet in search results so you will probably need to pro-actively submit your placeholder pages to them.
Shameless plug: at Branch, we provide all of the above as a free service. You can read more about it here and take a look at the set up docs here.
I am a complete novice when it comes to iOS app development. I have designed and submitted my business app to the app store and it is going alone ok. Only thing is I have to change, add or subtract products as our business changes. Is there a way where I don't have to write new code and resubmit to the apple store. e.g. some server based drag & drop portal I could use instead of having to change through Xcode and resubmitting. it is a fairly basic tabbed based application with maps
Thanks for your help
If your products are stored in a database, you could build up a REST Webservice to access them from your app.
If you do not have the programming skills to do so, a possible solution could be to use a UIWebView in your app that loads HTML-pages with your products, so you just need some basic html skills to update the products.
Note that if there are any links to other websites your app probably has to be ratet 17+.
Is is possible to dynamically figure out the position of an app's icon on the home screen of an iphone/ipad?
Sorry I don't have enough credit to comment yet so I'm posting here.
To my knowledge no you cannot natively or easily do this. I know of no open source or other libraries. The reason being that your app exists in its own world, it is not in touch per say with the rest of the device. It can get permissions to read and write data but it doesn't know of itself.
Does that make sense?
When you open a website it cannot know which tab it is in the browser. Instead it knows how it was accessed and what device (physically) is using it. It knows the user-agent, the time, the browser, etc because that is information sent to it in the request. In turn the phone on launch gives data to the app in how to handle it but not for example how many other apps are running, or where it is on the screen. It's not normally considered relevant to run time. In addition it's a security feature in preventing an app from deleting or altering other apps, as well as itself. If you have an iPhone you will notice that SIRI cannot turn off google maps navigation or any other non-apple specific app. Only apps natively comparable and private party ones (ex apples) are accessible because Apple did that intentionally. They all know of their own existence and each others. However non-native in the sense of apps that do not come preinstalled and manufactured by the company creating the device are less trustworthy, in addition there are no guarantees about how they will be run by the device, where they will be, or what other apps will be there.
It is true that an app can request for another app it may be comparable with but it is up the user to handle that information.
May I ask for curiosities sake why you are trying to do this? Are there any other workarounds?
However in terms of it being physically possible, yes. I doubt that apple allows independent developers to do this however. But an example of this occurring may be gridlock where a user can move their apps around differently on the screen. The app in this case has the ability to access app position. But I believe in this case app position is about the UI and not about nested files. apps cannot to my knowledge modify information outside of their own file. Imagine if you had an app that could edit other games scores.
It is not possible to dynamically find out the position of an app's icon on the Home Screen (even for jailbreak apps). Apple wants you to respect the user's privacy settings.
Extra Info - There is popular JavaScript library that adds a promo bubble to the bottom of your mobile web application, inviting users to bookmark the app to their device's home screen.
I am building some services that will scrape data from a number of websites and be stored into a database. I am then using services to call this data into an iOS app and display it in an organized manner that will be useful to users. Will my app be rejected due to this policy?
12.3
Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a
collection of links, may be rejected
I am not using any child browser, etc. When a user views the data within the app they may click a link to go to the specific webpage in Safari separately, but there is no "Buy" button, etc.
As long as you're adding some value to the content I don't think you have a problem. Look at Flipbook; it basically rehashes people's web data, but it a useful way. Aggregation itself isn't bad, it's people who don't put an effort to curate or correlate the data is where I believe Apple has a problem.
tl;dr: It depends on how you implement your app.
My company has an app (iOS and Android), to which the following scenarios applies. I'm trying to help point my engineers and product team in the right direction.
When one of our users clicks on a content link from one of our emails, or Tweets or Facebook posts, and they're on their mobile device, we prompt the user with a link to download our app. This is similar to what many apps do, including LinkedIn (see i.stack.imgur.com/glSgJ.png).
I imagine this is mildly effective of driving awareness and downloads of a native app, for new users who came in from social media and various web sources. However, it is not helpful at all for a user like me who already has the app!
1) clicking "No Thanks" keeps me on the mobile web (when I want to be in the native app), and
2) clicking "Download the App" takes me to iTunes App Store page for an app I already own.
SUPER ANNOYING. As a result, I have to manually open the app, and search for the content in question. I'm guessing most users don't do this. More importantly, depending on the UI/UX of the app, I may never get there!
Again, I know we are handling mobile web visits in the same way many other companies (including LinkedIn) do, but it seems we are leaving a lot of potential native app use on the table. I want our engineers to build that elusive 3rd option, "Open In App".
Spotify and Rdio have solved this very nicely. Here are deep content links (in the case of these companies, to a specific song) for the two apps respectively:
http://open.spotify.com/track/2SldBUTJSK6xz43i8DZ5r2
http://rd.io/x/QF3NK0JKWmk
If you have a moment, first grab the free version of Rdio or Spotify apps. Then, if you open those links above from an iOS device, you will see how nice the experience is, for existing native app users: Rdio has a nice "Tap to open in Rdio" link (http://i.stack.imgur.com/B7PuE.png), and Spotify's link is even more clear, "I have Spotify" (http://i.stack.imgur.com/Q3IV6.png). Both apps also include a link to download the app, for new app users. More importantly, both apps cookie the user: future visits to links (whether from email, Twitter, Facebook, etc) on mobile web automatically open the app, instead of prompting you to choose each time. SUPER CONVENIENT.
Questions:
1) How do they accomplish this? I'm initially only concerned about iOS (on which I tested this), but this same situation should apply to Android.
2) Why aren't more apps doing this? It doesn't seem like rocket science, so am I missing a key reason why this might be a bad idea? Half of my problem is convincing the use case.
3) Why don't I see discussions about this technique? I've searched a ton for an iOS solution. I come up with a lot of discussion about URL registrations (mainly app-to-app), but no one actually referring to the type of scenario I describe (mobile web prompt to open native app).
It seems that with minimal engineering, app developers could dramatically increase native app use, converting from mobile web. :)
Android supports deep linking. Please refer to
http://developer.android.com/training/app-indexing/deep-linking.html
Tapstream's deferred deep links can send users to specific views within apps (iOS only), even when the app isn't yet installed on their device.