I am building my first app with Xamarin forms, an EPUB reader. The core app is now working well and able to render documents. The question I am trying to answer is how I can register for my app as a handler for the EPUB document type so that if the file is opened from an email app my reader app will be available as a reader?
Ideally this should be a cross platform solution.
Thanks!
Ideally this should be a cross platform solution.
Unfortunately, there is no cross platform solution that you can use to register to read the file types.
You will need to follow the platform specifications for that,
iOS https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/application_fundamentals/working_with_images/custom-document-types/
Android https://gist.github.com/brendanzagaeski/70afe08654927befb26b
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I have one html file, I will set the html file in iphone based application by using mgwt .. Please help me to set the html files in phone ...
Thanks in advance..
Based on what I was able to grasp from you question you have an HTML file and you want that file to act as an iPhone hybrid app using mGWT. If that's the case, then there is an huge abyss to cover before getting to that point. This is the list of general steps you would need to cover to get all the way there.
Get a grasp of GWT Basics
Configure a simple mGWT application with PhoneGap support.
Understanding the way GWT MVP works will also be very helpful but not required
Once you have that working its time to wrap the web app into a iOS cordova webview with PhoneGap
Please note that you will require an Apple Mac to acomplish the last step. You will also reequire to be registered as an Apple developer if you intent to get your resulting app into a real device. Also you will require a good understanding of Java application development and a good grasp on how Web applications work (HTML, JS and CSS at least).
You have a long way ahead of you.
i have an existing iPhone and android application. my goal is to make some component in thsese apps reusable. so i am identifying components which are not using device capabilities and then will design these components from HTML pages so that the same code will be used in both apps.
one more requirement is that whatever web service is being used , that will be called from objective C or Java code and response will be consumed in my Html page.
Please give me your ideas as how can i achieve it?
what all tools should i use to make these pages?
are there any challenges, that we need to face at any stage in development?
I have no idea of web site development and html technologies, that's why i am looking for a help here.
Thanks
Rather than have bits of native and bits of HTML you would be better to develop the entire thing in Phonegap. Phonegap is developed in HTML and JS and then compiled into a native app utilising the OS's web view. This means that you will have the exact same code across devices and will allow for a more consistent UI.
Phonegap allows for native device functions to be used such as geolocation, accelerometer, audio, video, notifications, storage and more.
use Jquery Mobile to develop user interface and to package it as a offline app use phonegap.com
Hope it Helps !!!
EDIT:
See my answer
I saw some interesting frameworks to build applications for mobile platforms like Android and iPhone with HTML and Javascript so you can use your current web-development skills without learning a new platform language. That's very interesting because you can write just ONE application for many platforms. Very easy to maintain.
But, you cannot sell it in the App stores, so I’m wondering if it is possible to use an embedded webbrowser in the application that loads an external/included html file.
I have seen that it is possible to create Android and iPhone apps with flash, that's is easy, so i want to create a simple 'host' application that only loads content and I can use it over and over again to distribute a new app.
So the question is, is it possible to create a simple app with flash that embeds a webbrowser to load a html file?
When it is possible, next question is, it possible to communicate with the embedded webbrowser? Also a question is, will Apple allow such application in it app store?
I hope my question is understandable.
In a very strict sense, yes, you can make an app that is just a simple WebView wrapper pointing to your web-hosted app.
This is usually frowned upon though in the android market community, and i'm fairly positive such an app won't make it through Apple's closed-doors decision committee.
On the iPhone, if your app only consist of a UIWebView it is very likely that you app is going to be rejected. What you could do is ask your users to bookmark your webapp adding an icon to the home screen. Think Basecamp for iPhone.
After all this time i got the answer.
Phonegap uses a WebView to display the HTML content. It is a compiled native App with embedded WebView.
Apple accepts phonegap generated applications but it still not sure if it made it to the AppStore, it depends on what you doing with it. I think simple apps will made it. See also: http://www.phonegap.com/faq
EDIT/UPDATE:
I tried allot of tools/solutions to create crossplatform apps but all of these seem to do the same thing: It's a executable for the specific platform with an embedded browser. None of them compiles HTML to native code.
Flash (Builder) is something different, it requires AIR (can be compiled into the executable). When you using a WebView (only) with Flash, it is overkill because in fact you do not need AIR to display the HTML in a WebView. I think it is better to use phonegap to 'compile' the executable.
I'm building a simple web app for iOS that will not be published to the AppStore.
For infrastructure limits (and my boss!) , I can't use xCode anyway to build the app in a native way.
The only NATIVE functionality required by the web app should be a simple "Add to contacts".
I've tried to implement it with phonegap , but it works only compiled under xCode.
Is there any way to "add to contacts" without building an app (using only a web-app )?
Thanks in advance
Andrea
I don't think there's a way for you to add a contact directly, using only a web app.
PhoneGap was made for this sort of thing, allowing you to access a device's features (like Contacts, Camera, GPS, etc). But if your company's project specifications don't allow for an app... I don't know that there's a way to do this directly, via the web.
If you're building a web app... while you may be targeting iPhones, you're still making it available to anyone with a browser. I'm not 100% on this, but having some way for a web page to directly manipulate a (Mac) user's contacts seems like a security issue.
As a test, I tried placing a vCard on a page, and accessing it via my iPhone. Changing the extension from .vcf to .vcard didn't yield anything (and for some weird reason it prompted me to open the file via Dropbox).
What did work was emailing myself the vcard as an attachment. I was able to view the attachment, which then gave me the option to add the info as a new contact.
I came across this link:
http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596805784/
which seems to suggest web app can be converted to native iphone without writing a single line
of objective-c code. But the book mentioned there is outdated now and things may have changed a lot.
Are there open source software that will allow me to automatically convert my web application to native iphone ( or android) application? By the way my web application is html5 canvas based animation application with lot of html and css as well.
PhoneGap doesn't generate native code for you: it creates an application consisting of a WebView and throws your HTML code on it. From personal exerience I can add that the performance is quite slow, on both iPhone and Android, compared to a native app.
jqTouch creates a nice way to access your web application, but the application remains a web application residing on your site, plus you have to use some jquery for styling.
Apparently the only one that actually does generate native code is Appcelerator Titanium. On RhoMobile I never managed to get to the point to actually write some Ruby code because you have to know all the Ruby in he word just to install it on your Mac.
So the verdict was to sit down and develop the app in objective-c.
Have you looked at PhoneGap?
Simple steps to put your html app into iOS native container, without coding:
Download xCode
Download simple web view app from https://github.com/nomtek/iOSWebViewApp
Open simple web view app within xCode
Add your HTMLs to the project file structure
Run your app and voila :)
This approach is good if you don't need access to any phone specific features, just a standard Web View. Loading time will be short as this approach doesn't load any extra libraries.