Does progress web app support adding app shortcuts (ref: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/shortcuts.html)?
Thanks
The web platform now supports App shortcuts. At the time of writing, app shortcuts are available on Android (Chrome 84) and Windows (Chrome 85 and Edge 85). More desktop platform support will follow.
See https://web.dev/app-shortcuts/
No. App shortcuts are an Android API. Maybe browsers will surface a similar API in the future but currently none do.
Related
I am examining PWA and Web Components technologies recently. As far as I have learned now Web Components is a new suit of tech,
Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, HTML Templates and HTML imports. Together with those Web Components enabling techs Web App Manifest, Service Workers, and certain performance improvement techniques used to make what is called as Progressive Web Applications.
What I wonder is when one "Adds to Home Screen" an application in a certain web browser what is the browser that opens it when it is launched from its home screen icon? Is it the browser it has been added to home screen from, or it is the default browser of the system no matter which browser it has been added to home screen from, or it is just a generic web view available on the host operating system at the moment like the one used in native web applications?
Lastly, is it possible for a developer coding her/his app to choose one?
Currently, for me, these combinations open a new "Standalone" window
I believe Android/Chrome is the only one that installs a WebApk
All the others are just shortcuts to open your website in that browser without the normal browser navigation items
I know of no options for the developer for how the shortcut opens your PWA
Android 8.10 - Chrome 67
Android 8.10 - Chrome (beta) 68
Android 8.10 - Edge 42
Android 8.10 - Opera 43
iOS 11.4 (simulator) - Safari
As test I created app shortcut of site https://pwa.rocks from browser:
Brave
Firefox
Chrome
and found that there were 3 different shortcut created for each of the browser. Launching each shortcut resulted in opening the respective browser that created it.
I believe there is no way of changing the default browser to launch the app by coding something in the app. I could not find a way of doing that, if someone knows how to do it, I will be interested to know about it
Here is similar question: What browser will PWA (Progressive Web App) use after adding to home screen?
Google announced that they drop support for web apps in Chrome.
Basically, web app is a local HTML/CSS/JS app that runs in a separated custom "standalone" Chrome window.
Is there any way (preferably easy), to convert this web app to a real desktop app that not depend on Chrome in anyway? Using maybe NodeJS? If yes what is the right way to do it?
Thanks.
You could try one of these tools:
https://applicationize.me/
https://www.bzgapps.com/coherence
https://fluidapp.com/ (for Mac only)
Don't know about "easy", but it seems to me that the natural evolution is to Electron or NW.js, and both of these are mentioned in the Google blog article on this subject. (I'm moving to Electron.) Both have advantages over Chrome Apps, mostly that they are true desktop applications. To cite one example, you can now manipulate the menu bar, something out-of-bounds for Chrome Apps.
Pure JavaScript code in your Chrome App, such as anything to access the internet, should move over directly. Same for much UI stuff, as you're still using a browser window for the UI. The app will, however, have to be restructured.
Added Note: Chrome Apps ran on 4 platforms: MacOS, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS. Electron and NW.js apps won't run on ChromeOS. So, the ability to write a four-platform completely binary-portable app is going away.
Safari's Web Inspector is absolutely awful, and it keeps crashing on me. One of my colleagues suggested using Chrome Devtools to inspect Safari pages via Remote Debugging. I haven't found anything on Google for how to do such a thing--is that possible?
Safari and Chrome use different debugging protocols (initially these were very similar, but over time they grew into separate things). Thankfully, there is a Google project that does the translation between these protocols - iOS WebKit Debug Proxy. It doesn't mention desktop Safari though.
Is there a way to test PhoneGap projects on various iPhones using an emulator. I am using the PhoneGap Build website.
I can do this easily with Appcelerator projects but can't see how to do this with PhoneGap.
#Bill,
There are several classes of emulators that you can use for Phonegap, and all mobile development.
webbrowsers in emulation (responsive) mode
Wienre (comes with server)
Ripple (work with Google Chrome)
IDE (eclipse, Android Studio, etc.
On #1, Google Chrome is the most popular and there are several plugins, Ripple being the most popular. Firefox has plugins and most people use Firebug. The browsers are mainly use for UI development. They all to a varying degree have WEB API access(1), which is good for testing but requires side steps to integrate with phonegap (so most people only do rudimentary testing with Web API). Firefox ctrl+shft+m ; Google Chrome ctrl+shft+i (then look for phone icon)
On #2, Weinre (pronounced winery), launches a window in emulator mode and has access to the console. This allows additional messages, more than in webbrowswer emulation mode.
On #3, Ripple is a favorite because it works with Google Chrome. It is similar to Wienre, but has no server.
On #4, Many of the mentioned IDEs have an emulator built in, or use an SDK to accomplish the same task.
Added Sept 1, 10:30pm PDT
There is this also.
What IDE for Phonegap? Is Eclipse enough? [closed]
Which IDE for Phonegap? Is Eclipse enough?
Best of Luck
Jesse
Footnotes
#1 - Many of the plugins have an API base on Web API.
I'm totally new to opera mobile addons. Can someone suggest me a site which can help me to get started?
I'm currently using a Sony Ericsson P990i. It is loaded with Opera Mobile 8.65.
I type "opera:plugins" in the Opera Mobile address bar; it showed me the list of plugins installed.
So, I'd like to develop plugins for my personal use.
Is there any tutorial/examples of Hello World for opera mobile plugin development?
Till recently we in Opera did not have the ability for running extensions in Opera Mobile. We have recently released a labs build with support for extensions http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/extensions-opera-mobile-labs/
The way to create Opera extensions is documented here http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/getting-started-with-opera-extensions/ The idea is to create extensions, and not exactly worry about desktop or mobile. Just creating nice extensions regardless of platform.