I know that you can open system apps, such as the browser, or share dialog, through cordova applications, but I was wondering if it is possible to interact with android actions, such as answering phone call, etc, through a cordova/phonegap app.
EDIT:
So, there wasn't any plugin that can do exactly what I wanted. But I wrote a small plugin https://github.com/KIvanow/installedApps which, in combination with http://plugins.cordova.io/#/package/com.hutchind.cordova.plugins.launcher can actually list and start every app on the device.
I think that Córdova is limited for whats on the API + plugins developed by users, if you can't find a plugin for the behavior you'r looking, you need to develop your own Córdova plugin on the respective native languages.
Related
I have found limitations in using frameworks like Ionic for building mobile apps. These are mainly to do with accessing device specific functionality. So two questions:
Are there any similar limitations with using Electron for building Mac Apps?
What are the advantages of building native apps using swift?
Some native capabilities are available in Electron, like adding an entry to the Dock menu or showing a menu bar icon. Other capabilities have been added by third parties, like this one, which plugs into System Preferences. If nothing else, there's a JS-to-Obj C bridge, to invoke Objective-C code.
Another important factor is that apps made using write-once-run-anywhere frameworks often have an odd UX and don't fit in to platform conventions. You get this free when you build a real native app using Cocoa and Swift / Objective-C.
For example, toolbars should change in appearance when the window loses focus. You can see this for yourself by opening (say) Safari Preferences and then switching to another window or app. Electron apps don't do this.
As another example, if a right-click menu is open, the user should be able to press "C" to move the selection to "Copy". Electron again doesn't do this.
This results in an app that looks and feels odd and second-tier. If a native-quality UX is a priority, build your app in Cocoa.
If you don't have the resources to build separate Mac and Windows apps (say you're a two-person startup or a charity) but still want a better UX than a web app, then consider Electron.
Reference: Making a web app feel native, and a subsequent email discussion with Ben Gotow, the engineer who gave that talk.
In this moment I'm just learning how to use electron, but I feel Electron is very easy to use you could see this deck from a Teacher of Turing School
https://speakerdeck.com/stevekinney/building-desktop-applications-with-node-and-electron
I want to check if a particular app is installed and if it is installed, invoke it.
AFAIK, the way to do it is to check if the custom url scheme of the app is registered and use that url to launch the app.
Is there a way for me to do this in my Cordova app?
To be very specific I want to check if the Google Maps application is installed on iOS and if it is, launch it with its custom url else show the default Apple maps.
This url : https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/ios/urlscheme : shows how to do it in Objective-C, but how do I do it in Javascript in my Cordova app?
I could not find any plugin to achieve the same. Other questions on SO deal with either doing this from a native app or JS on a regular website (in the browser). The most common work-around is to try launching and use a timeout to see if the app launch failed and still my app is running. This is pretty unclean. Access to the iOS API canOpenURL through JS would be best.
Hints?
Cordova does not ship with this feature. There is a plugin which implements it for iOS, though.
https://github.com/philbot5000/CanOpen
I did not find anything for Android yet, but I do not think this would be hard to do in native Android Code. Even if you are not proficient with Objective-C or Java and never intend to write fully native apps, you should learn some basics if you want to build apps with Cordova.
Small and simple plugins are really easy to do. Read the docs and have a look at the code of some simple plugins to see how it is done. For example the source code of the one above or of the one below is really simple and straightforward to understand:
https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/LaunchMyApp-PhoneGap-Plugin
I'm developing a prototype of an Android app in HTML/CSS/JS, so that I can experiment with the UX of the app.
As a part of that I want to be able to style HTML elements as Android elements and (preferably) have them behave as if they're native Android UI elements.
Is there a JavaScript or CSS library that will do this for me? I've Googled, but nothing has come up.
I would recommend to take a look at the following Frameworks and Browserplugins. Maybe you will decide afterwards to regret using the native android toolkit at all, because it can be a big advantage to develop the application platform independent using HTML5 and Javascript techniques. Than later, if you want to port it to another platform you won't have to change a lot / almost nothing on the code base.
Phonegap
Ripple Browser Plugin (Phone Emulator)
JQuery Mobile
which is completely themeable: Jquery native android theme
The whole thing can finaly look like the following:
jpHolo
I've been playing for a while with phonegap,
did some tests on my Android...
It's pretty nice.
My questions are:
What is the best (your favorite) framework to develop native mobile applications with web client side (HTML / JavaScript / CSS)?
How easy is to build and maintain those applications in multiplatforms (iOS / Android / BlackBerry) parallel?
Does it has many exceptions between different platforms (iOS / Android / BlackBerry)?
What are the requirements to develop my app for iOS?
Should I need a special IDE with special SDK? Must I have a Mac?
We're currently building a native iOS application using React Native. It would be a shame if it wasn't included here.
Pros:
React treats the DOM as an implementation detail. This made the transition over to native UI very natural. It also removes the need for HTML/CSS when writing a native app. All you need is native components, written in JavaScript.
Native components! The fundamental native components have already been bridged over to JavaScript, and there is a community busy at work bringing everything else over. The thing is, if you know or are willing to learn some Objective C or Java, there is an easy process to add any native module (or third-party module) to React Native.
Quick iteration. There have been over 2600 commits to the master branch since it was open-sourced in March.
You get all of the benefits of normal React: a virtual view layer, diffing, declarative UI creation, fantastic developer experience, and a stellar community.
You can build for multiple platforms from the same repository, reusing much of the same codebase (application logic, mostly).
Cons:
It's still young. There are a few features that require jimmy-rigging, a third-party library, or custom Objective-C/Java to get working.
Some great third-party libraries that are tied to the DOM or Browser API still don't work on React Native, including React Router.
The biggest pains have had to do with XCode and Apple's developer program, but there's no way to get around that.
How easy is to build and maintain those applications in multi-platforms?
React Native for Android was open-sourced on September 14th, 2015. I haven't used it yet, but here's what I've been able to learn so far. Update 10/21/16: React Native for the Windows Universal Platform was announced earlier this year. That means you can now use React Native to build apps for Windows desktop, Windows phones, and even Xbox!
React Native is not intended to be a write once, run anywhere mentality. They adopt a learn once, write anywhere paradigm instead. iOS is a very different platform than Android, so sincere effort needs to be put into the design for either platform. The native APIs will also be different.
So, you will end up re-writing code for native components and APIs. However, much of your application logic can be re-used. In fact, React-Native is organized so that you can keep both your Android and iOS applications in the same repository, so that you can re-use the same code when possible. I think it's brilliant, but only time will tell. According to them, it works well so far.
By the way, a team at Facebook built an iOS app using React Native, then turned around and built the Android version in three months using 87% of the same code base.
What are the requirements to develop my app for iOS?
Currently, you need a Mac and XCode in order to deploy. Currently there are very few ways around this. According to this issue and from conversations on Slack, once deployed, you can actually develop from a Windows or Linux machine. Facebook is also working on open-sourcing all of their Nuclide packages, which, according to their presentation at F8, will include tools to package and build without XCode.
Overall, React Native has been a stellar experience. It is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above anything else currently out there. The feeling within the community is also very positive. I can only assume it will get better with time.
If your app is going to be very simple (for example a port of existing web app) and you need it only on one platform and it does not need integration with phone-specific features you may want to simply use a WebView on the selected platform. If your selected platform is iOS and you don't have any programming skills, you can follow these steps:
Download xCode on your Mac,
Download this simple web view app project: https://github.com/nomtek/iOSWebViewApp
Open the simple web view app within xCode
Add your HTMLs to the project
Run it :)
Advantages of this approach:
Simple setup
No extra libraries to load - the application starts much faster
This is one arena that keeps changing, and it only gets better. Googling at the moment of your interest would be the best bet. At the time of this writing, I am watching the following right now, in no particular order:
Enyo JS
Sencha
NativeScript
Meteor
PhoneGap
Appcelerator
these are the options
Phonegap : http://phonegap.com/
PhoneGap is a free and open source framework that allows you to create
mobile apps using standardized web APIs for the platforms you care
about.
.Download the Phonegap.
Coronalabs : http://coronalabs.com/
Corona SDK builds rich mobile apps for iOS, Android, Kindle and Nook.
Build high quality >mobile apps in a fraction of the time.
Appcelerator : http://www.appcelerator.com/
Appcelerator is the only mobile first platform that enables enterprise
to create, deliver >and analyze their mobile applications.
Phone Gap does look like your best option, if you are trying to use javascript to build a mobile app
Yes, you will need a mac, because you will need to install XCODE (https://developer.apple.com/xcode/) - apple´s own IDE.
If you invest a bit in learning a new script language, Coronalabs would be your new weapon of choice. With it you can build native (cross-platform) apps and you can use a webview to add your HTML/CSS/Javascript stuff if you need it.
At the moment React Native is the best option for creating mobile apps in JavaScript.
Here are my top 3 reasons:
Very active development and updates - After all it originated at FB
Negligible learning curve
Great online resources
I was able to write a small but functional app without previous React Native experience and even deploy it to the Google Play Store all within 2 days.
Also one great benefit that i see with React Native is that you can "eject" your app at any point in time and continue to work on it in Android Studio or XCode. This could be a big relief in projects that start simple but could get complex over a period of time.
Here is short tutorial I put together while building my first react native app for Android:
http://geekycentral.com/creating-a-native-android-app-using-javascript-hello-react-native/
I am developing a web page for iPhones and iPod Touch's. I am using the Universal iPhone UI framework. I need to have silding page transitions, but can't seem to get it working. Is there a good javascript framework I could use that would make this easier? I've done a lot of normal web dev with jquery, but it doesn't seem to like the iPhone.
Try http://code.google.com/p/iui/
It's a nice little JS framework, among other things, that will help you with the transition aspect. Have a flick through the documentation too, as it'll give you quite a few additional options as well.
Regardless of what framework you're using, the WebKit CSS trasitions are extensions of CSS and were developed with the iPhone and iPhone web-based apps in mind. You can do some very clever, complex animations with no JavaScript and only a few lines of CSS.
Here's what Google finds on the subject.
Try the following frameworks.
Jo
Sencha Touch
jQuery Mobile
These are for serving Web based mobile sites, they can then in turn be made into Apps for Android or iOS using PhoneGap
Of the 3, Sencha is the more mature project and has the most things out of the box. Jo looks very promising and would probably directly compete with Sencha. jQuery mobile is very interesting but just far to early to do any production code with it, too rough around the edges. jQuery mobile takes a different approach to the others as it is html based and it interperates the attributes on tags to turn things into tableviews or menus.
jQuery mobile is quicker to hack together and get your head around, where the other two take a little bit more thinking. But once you figure them out its easy enough.
If you don't want to serve the site via a url at all and want to just build an app then Appcelerator is the way to go. You write code in JS and it makes native Android or iOS apps for you. You will get access to pretty much the full Android/iOS api.
I have coded with appcelerator, however I am no longer going to use it and use one of the above frameworks, probably Sencha for just now. I can get access to the device native apis via PhoneGap and for simpler apps give a great experience cross device via a url.
Reference
Apple's Dashcode IDE has an extensive set of page transition templates for the iPhone. You should be able to fire up a quick project, get the look you want, then export the resulting HTML/CSS/Javascript into your favorite IDE.
The only catch is that it's OSX only.
I've been deep into an iPhone web app project lately. We evaluated iUI, but decided against it for various reasons. Consequently, I've developed most of the same functionality from scratch. While I can't share the code from the actual product (as I'm under NDA), I have been documenting many of the techniques I've used to do certain things. Check out the links below:
http://segdeha.com/e/css-transitions/
http://segdeha.com/blog/2009/07/19/stupid-webkit-tricks