Does Apple accept apps with an embedded browser using UIWebView? - ios

Can you tell me if Apple accepts an application that opens an embedded browser with most of the functionality living on a web application on the internet?
I have read contradicting opinions on this, and I have even seen several apps that seem to use an embedded browser for the main functionality of the app. Still I couldn't confirm this.
This way we could correct problems on the application functionality on the server with no need to submit another version of the app, while keeping the ease of release through the app store and the home screen shortcut.
Thanks!

I can't get the exact quote from the guidelines, but I know that Cordova apps are allowed, and updating the web files dynamically without going through a new native app version is also allowed, as long as:
* The updated code runs with the Safari Webkit engine (true for Cordova)
* The main functionality of the app is not changed

You say this is a bad idea because the user can save a bookmark on their home screen. This doesn't seem to me like a reason for something being a bad idea to me. If this is the only drawback then I would say go ahead and do it. Why should I care if someone wants to bookmark to my site? The app will not work very well outside the app anyway. If you have an actual logical reason why this is a bad idea instead of some emotional response then please bring it up.
I am doing this too in my application. I am under the impression that as long as you are pointing to a secure site then it should be okay. Please enlighten me: is there some good reason why Apple forces people to develop applications the hard way? A web application is hard enough without having to deal with some monolithic organisation imposing ridiculous rules on you.

Related

Open other applications with their Deeplinks in Swift

I am learning to have deep links in my application.
I would like to have my users link their social media, blog, or other site in my application.
But, it should attempt to open a link by detecting the site and attempt to open that site's application (at least for mainstream social media etc).
I was attempting to use https://github.com/BranchMetrics/Roots-iOS but their own demo does not even work it seems and I could not get my application to work(I am also using swift so I am not used to reading Obj-C too much).
Does anyone know how to do this?
Although it is not quite what i needed, the library https://github.com/SwiftKitz/Appz is pretty close.
It launches to an external application, with a web fall back. It is also pretty easy to add code to pass a url and detect the base application and parse it out into that applications deeplinking scheme (which was info I didn't have before.)
Sorry for the trouble on this.

Sharing webpages without the use of subdomains

I'm currently working on a site that shows results which'pop up'. It's still on the same page, this means we can't share it via url since those are all the same. Check out the current Beta to understand what I mean. www.wheretrip.com/prelaunch. We use node.js with sockets for the backend, and javascript for most of the frontend.
So if people want to share the trip they found to Spain on a certain date for example, this can't be shared.
Does someone knows a way this problem could be solved?
Kind regards,
Sando

Is it possible that iOS Safari keeps a page opened while reloading that very same page?

I have a Node.Js app that uses Socket.IO for a chat-like feature.
It works fine on desktop, but what happens sometimes on an iPhone is that when a user loads the page, they'll load it again and the system thinks that there's two people viewing this page already.
I've experienced this kind of caching error before with other stuff in my app (like it would take a few reloads for the page to fetch the new data – something that never happens to desktop and something that has to do with caching also I think).
Did anybody encounter a similar problem and know a solution?
Maybe there's some kind of directive I can give in the meta tags of my app to tell IOS browsers treat it differently?
Thanks!

iOS - How to integrate my application into a browser?

Since I'm not even sure where and how to start solving my issue I will appreciate every smallest push to the right direction.
So, I need to write an iOS application that would keep track on some events of any or at least some webkit-based browsers, or even integrate my app's "Open with..." item into a browser's context menu.
Is it at least possible?
P.S. yeap, since there's no way to use browser extensions in iOS, I'm trying to find workarounds without need to implement my own browser but rather tiny 3-rd side application working along with some of existing browsers.

Is it possible to load interactive elements into an iOS app?

Does anyone have any ideas how I could package an external interactive slide that could be dynamically loaded by an iOS app? Is it at all possible?
e.g. Imagine having a presentation app on an iPad. There is a set of interactive slides held on the web somewhere, let's say they contain draggable elements.
Can I load one of these slide objects into the app and interact with it? If so, what format would the slide object be?
Thanks,
Mark
Technically it's possible to dynamically load bundles (NSBundle) components in an app. These bundles could even contain executable code, though AppStore guidelines prohibit use of dynamically loaded NSBundles in this way for security reasons.
Additionally you could just use a UIWebView to display some 'slides' on a webpage, though it will be very hard to make the app behave as if it's the same as the native slides - perhaps even impossible (due to how rendering of webpages work compared to native controls, for example).
Ok so lets say you have these "external interactive slides" on a web server somehow. Since you are not saying they are of a certain type (like powerpoint or such) I will just assume that these slides are of some rare format that is probably not supported by any existing apps or the Safari browser.
Then the answer to your question would be: Write your own iOS-app that can read, present and edit these slides. What format are they? Well it doesn't matter. Write an app that can download the slide data from the data and parse it, and present it on the phone.
Then let the user interact with it, and perhaps make the app upload the changes to the server.
You can do anything you like in your app, there are no limits. You just have to write the code for it. If there was some kind of standardised format, lets say you wanted your app to show powerpoint presentations, then you would have 3 choices. Use someone else´s app, or write your own app with a parser for the powerpoint files or make your own app that use some code that someone else wrote to do it (a third part library that you include in your app)
In your specific case, I can not tell if there are any third part librarys to interact with your slides, but my guess is that you will need to do most of it on your own. You could start with looking at how the web services that interact with the slides online works, and if you can interact with them from an iOS-app that you make yourself.
There is nothing stopping you from creating an app, read the slide data into the app, present it in any way you like, let the user change it, save it in your app, or upload the changes to a server. It's all up to you =)
Good luck!

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