We are in the process of creating a web app that has print capabilities, and would like to be able to support this functionality on as many devices as possible. Our users are specifically using iPads, but we will eventually want to support other devices. I've seen that iOS now uses AirPrint, but what about printers that don't support this? Is there any way to cover that from a web app standpoint or are other measures necessary?
Check out this App: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/printer-pro/id393313223?mt=8
If it's an option you could use it, or come up with something on your own, but it is possible.
Related
I am working on an application that will allow the user to turn off cellular data or at least turn off notifications from other applications on the device, all through my application. Is this possible? (I know that in Android it possible)
Your app has absolutely no control what-so-ever of other apps, not even indirectly. The one exception is using a custom url scheme to open the app, and optionally, ask it to do something.
No, on iOS you can't even find what other apps the user has installed.
Even if you could, they are all sandboxed. You can't touch anything inside the other apps.
I'm doing a research for my thesis and I would like to know how I can access to the views methods or functions of the user interface(like Android View Client for Android devices) of a ios device from bash without touching the device connected. The reason is that I want to create a self-test for an app and then I would do things like touches or gestures via software. How could i do? Can you give me some guidelines?
must work for devices without jailbreak
Sorry for the bad english.
This is not practical / possible. Instead, you should look into UIAutomation. You can use javascript to simulate all interactions with an app on either actual hardware or in the simulator.
We were exploring various test suites for mobile automated testing and ran into this company called Perfecto Mobile. One of the features that blew me away was they are able to (without jailbreaking) effectively perform a "Remote desktop" on a physical iPad.
So, the iPad's screen is mirrored within a web application, it can register touch / swipe events on the web app and perform them on the device. The only relevant technical detail I have is that all this is being performed using commands sent over the USB cable.
I'm really curious as to how this is implemented and details on relevant Private APIs if any.
Thanks,
Teja
I'm not familiar with PerfectoMobile, but I can give you a few pointers on how this can be accomplished:
For the mirroring, one way would be to look at using AirPlay, the APIs are pretty well documented, but not to do what we're talking about which would require some serious reverse engineering, but it's definitely possible, these guys have done it. A different approach would be to run a background app that would periodically take snapshots of the main screen, and send them over a socket connection to a client. You could do this as a VNC server, and to incorporate the remote view in a web app, you could use noVNC. As far using a USB connection, in the case of the background app talking to a client over TCP, you could to a port forward.
To actually perform on the device the touch events sent from your remote viewer, most people have been using the GSEvent group of functions from the GraphicsServices private framework without needing to jailbreak the device. Again, a background app would receive over a socket an instruction such as "Tap there", instantiate the GSEvent, and inject it so it gets processed in the run loop of the most front app.
These few possibilities, at least, have been implemented successfully in different iOS apps up to iOS 6.1 (iOS7 is a different animal). You won't find any such app in the App Store, since Apple clearly prohibits the use of private frameworks in 3rd party apps, instead people deploy them in-house using Enterprise and ad-hoc provisioning profile. On Android however, there's VMLite available in the Play Store.
If you looking to share screen from ios / android, check out skreen.me. They have sample apps you can try out, also they provide libs for mobile app integration.
I am a web developer who needs to build an HTML5 mobile app - which we will need to try and submit to app stores, including Apple's App store. Therefore, I need to somehow wrap my app into a native framework.
That being said, I don't have time to learn the nitty gritty of Objective-C and figure it all out.
I am trying to decide between using a service like PhoneGap, or simply creating a smaller native app with a webview that pulls up my mobile app from my site's server.
In this case, the only native hardware that my app needs to be in touch with are push notifications (probably through Urban Airship) and Geolocation (which can be accomplished via HTML5).
When is it wise to go with something like PhoneGap vs. simply creating a UIWebView, and vice versa? Which would you suggest in this case?
Apple is loyal enough to PhoneGap apps - almost no problems with approval on iStore. You should just follow Apple Human Guidelines and everything should be OK.
PhoneGap provides lot's of different and interesting features. Also it's cross-platform - works great on iOS, Android, WP7 etc. I think it's the best way to wrap your HTML5 and JS.
Talking about pushes - if you select phonegap, i recommend to look at pushwoosh service.
Is it possible to scan all the text that is being displayed on BlackBerry screen at run-time? We have a project that needs to collect the common English wording used in mobile devices.
I do not beleive there is a way. Certainly no API that I've seen documented would allow you to do this. Regardless of the purpose of your program, the ability would be a significant security and privacy issue. Essentially the same answer you have gotten for each other platform.