I wrote an app for iOS on iPhone and iPad. I would like to make the app (a children's game) I wrote available on my website through Flash. I don't know if this is possible...
Would I just have to write the application in another language? I can't find any tools that would help me make it available.
If you wrote your app in HTML5, then you can make it available to your website, but if written with obj C, I highly doubt there is any easy way out solution beside re-write the app in another language.
There are no tools to make an iOS application run through Flash Player.
Probably your best bet on writing an application that will run as a native app and within the web is to pursue writing a web application optimized for smartphones. This way you could use a UIWebView to run it within a native application (and thus still have it in the App Store) but also make it available via the web. You could even consider leveraging tools like Phonegap to help with this. But of course this means re-writing your application.
Related
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 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.
I am pretty new to iPhone and spent some months on it but.....But i think my learning went waste when i read about web application for iPhone...These can be developed even with a nil knowledge of Objective c...
I am very shocked about that what is need of an iPhone native app....i mean iPhone developers are less required now?
please suggest........
Well it's not that simple.
You can do quite a lot on the iphone with html5 and css3. Especially effects using webkit transforms are really impressive and performant. Furthermore, you can for example access the GPS hardware using javascript.
On top of that it is also possible to write 'enhanced' webapplications using a framework like phonegap (http://www.phonegap.com/) that enables you to use things like the accelerometer or tab controls via javascript as well as makes your webapplication into a compiled app that can be destributed via the appstore (and used offline).
Combine these features with a framework like sencha touch (http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/) or the currently developed jquery mobile and you can write really usefull applications that feel like native iphone apps using mostly just web technology. Another benefit is, that these applications can also be ported to android devices rather easily.
But this all comes at the price of performance. Thomas Fuchs blogged some of his experiences in speeding up web applications for the ipad here: http://mir.aculo.us/2010/06/04/making-an-ipad-html5-app-making-it-really-fast/
Generally speaking it is extremely hard to write realtime or image heavy applications that perform smoothly on the ipad and it is close to impossible to match the performance and smoothness of native core animation effects.
Furthermore things like file access, core data (some hacks exist) or direct access to the 3d hardware require you to write cocoa code anyway.
In my current applications i usually start with a bare-bone ios app containing some webviews. Then i sketch up features using web technology and implement performance critical parts using cocoa
I have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, there are two ways to develop applications that can run on the iPhone: web applications and native applications. Yes, web applications don't require you to know Objective-C. Yes, Objective-C is more difficult than HTML/CSS. But you can't do everything in a web application that you can in a native application. So no, native apps aren't going anywhere any time soon, and neither are the programmers who write them. They are no "less required" now than before.
It's the same thing on the desktop. You can write web applications that the user runs in their web browser, or you can write a native app in Objective-C. There is a place for both, but native apps aren't going anywhere any time soon.
You can choose to take the easier route, if you choose, but you won't end up in the same place as someone who has taken the time to learn Objective-C and written a native app. Whether you need that additional latitude and functionality is up to you. As long as you're making threats like "help me or I will leave this field", I suspect that very few of us will miss you.
A huge portion of possible apps that don't require the highest performance, special device hardware features not yet supported in HTML5, nor the security of compiled code, can be done as web apps.
But if you need the highest frame rates or a lot of number crunching, a native app can run from around 20X to over 200X faster than Javascript in a web app. A native app can also do audio processing and real-time video analysis, background VOIP or GPS tracking, use other brand new iOS APIs (MIDI keyboard support, etc.), and include lots of compiled libraries and other unix code that just isn't available in HTML5.
I've summed up my thoughts on the whole "native vs. web" discussion in a blog post here: http://www.springenwerk.com/2011/09/thoughts-on-mobile-ui-design.html
In a nutshell: You can't get around getting to know the platform you are targeting if you want to provide a great user experience. Plus, you shouldn't try to mimic native UI/UX in a web application, it will only disappoint your users.
I was looking into PhoneGap and Titanium framework, and I did not clearly understand how to they work, let's suppose I have already developed an app for android or iphone, can I run this app on another mobile with a different OS with PhoneGap or Titanium help?
Or I have to develop again my app with PhoneGap/Titanium framwork?
In this case I have full support at all the features like thread, JSON or XML parsing and so on?
Thank you
PhoneGap basically takes a client-side web app (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and wraps the whole thing in a native device's web view control. You can hook to some of the device's native functions, but as you can guess, it's pretty limited compared to native development. But easy, and brings in a whole range of skills that a lot of people already have. That's really the appeal of PhoneGap.
Titanium is also html/javascript oriented, but it actually claims to compile to native code. Their sample "kitchen sink" app demos quite a lot of the native APIs, at least for the iPhone. I doubt you'd be able to deal directly with threading, but JSON for sure, and I'd think XML as well.
Titanium has full support for JSON or XML parsing.
You can see Titanium examples - Kitchen Sink - for more details.
The idea behind phone gap is that you can take a browser based client app that is written in html/css/javascript and use phonegap to gain access to some native mobile hardware like contacts, gps, accelerometer, etc. Phonegap allows you also to build this web app for different mobile devices all using the same web app code.
To answer the first part of your question, no, you would not be able to take a developed app and use PhoneGap or Titanium to run the app on another device.You would have to write the app in either the PhoneGap or Titanium Framework and then build the application to the devices you want to support through the tools that each give you.
For example, you would write your code in JavaScript(Titanium) or HTML/CSS/JavaScript(PhoneGap), then use the app's build tool to create the file that would be released onto the phone.
I am planning to make an iPhone web application and I just wanted to know what is required for web development?
Can I do the web development on a windows machine? Does Apple provide any iPhone plugin so that we can develop web application using Windows?
What is required for developing on a Mac?
Regards,
Amit
If you are making a web application, you can download Safari for Windows and view it there.
You can also use Joe Hewitt's iUI framework to make your app look and feel all iPhone-y.
? If you are gonna build a web application, the application runs on the browser. To use your application the user use Safari (on the iPhone). Apple doesn't control web applications.
If you mean, embed your web application, INSIDE a native iPhone application, you need a Mac to build the wrapper, for the core application you can use whatever system you want.
May I suggest to take a look at phonegap (if you are looking to iPhone app).
Check out these three apple sites:
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/codinghowtos/Mobile/GraphicsMediaAndVisualEffects/index.html
http://developer.apple.com/safari/
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/navigation/CodingHow-Tos.html
I would check out these pages thoroughly, and also at a minimum, I'd download safari for mac or windows.
Yes, you can develop it on windows. They are just web apps.
For mac or windows, latest safari and a public website is probably all you need. Check out google app engine for a good free development site that supports a database/datastore. www.appspot.com
Also, you can look at the webapps on a regular computer. http://www.apple.com/webapps/travel/staycation.html
http://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty2.pl/product=25536&cat=94&platform=osx&method=sa/
http://www.apple.com/webapps/games/
I presume you are talking about creating a web application designed to be used from an iphone.
The iphone uses safari as its browser. You can download this for use on windows and it should give you an accurate representation of how your app will look when rendered on an iphone. However in order to test how well your app performs on the phone, and if it really is usable using the touch screen the I think the only way to be really sure is to test using the iPhone.
You can use safari for windows to test the rendering but for your final tests you need to use a real iphone in order to understand how your users will experience it.