IPhone Any Framework available to mimic Messages app - iphone

I am planning to develop a free sms app which sends sms using APIs.
To make it easy to user, i want to use same look n feel like Messages App,
Any frameworks available for that?
I have downloaded many frameworks like
Acani
TwitterFon
Samsoffes https://github.com/samsoffes/ssmessagesviewcontroller
But none of them seems to be working
Any working framework available?
Thanks

Related

Phonegap for iphone development on Windows questino re native api

I've spent the day googling all the leads on developing iphone apps on Windows and apart from buying a mac the most suitable route seems to be Phonegap. I cannot find out whether Phonegap gives access to all the native functionality. For example I want to access and manipulate the address book contents. I also want to be able to send text messages programatically and intercept and examine incoming text messages. It would be helpful if someone could confirm whether this can be done with Phonegap.
My understanding is that Phonegap is based on webapps but I am assuming that an app developed with it can run offline for operations that dont require internet access.
Even using Phonegap you will still need access to a mac to actually build your iOS application. This is a restriction that Apple has in place, and to my knowledge there is no way around it.
Phonegap uses a UIWebView to display your application built using HTML, CSS, Javascript etc, but this does not mean that an Internet connection is required for the app to run (so offline apps are definitely possible).
With regards to Phonegap's functionality, details of the Phonegap API can be found on their website. Specific to your needs, I believe phonegap provides access to the device's address book through the contacts API:
http://docs.phonegap.com/en/2.3.0/cordova_contacts_contacts.md.html#Contacts
I don't think Phonegap provides the ability to send SMS messages itself, but many people have developed extensions to add extra functionality to their applications through plugins. The majority of Phonegap iOS plugins can found at the following GitHub repo. The plugin I think you require is the SMSComposer:
https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins/tree/master/iOS/SMSComposer

AppStore and alternatives for the following app

I got an offer to develop a simple iPhone app that would call a web service with user's credentials. An user would get the list of files that can be downloaded (.pdfs) and could then download the wanted file. Simple enough...
Now, I've had bad experience with publishing on AppStore. Basically, they refused one app because according to them our RSS reader for a online newspaper wasn't in accordance with their guidelines. They said that the application was a simple web aggregator which I won't argue now. Not now :)
So, back to the new app problem :)
I would like to know what are the options for distributing the new app. The client has a web page and wants to give it's visitor this app to get that data from their phones too.
Technically, the app doesn't have to be a native app. It can be a phoneGap solution too since it's quite simple regarding the functionality. Sincerely, I am afraid that there is no way that Apple will allow this app to be uploaded to their store being native, phoneGap...
P.S.
I would also like to know is there a way to distribute an "internal" (not publicly available) iPhone app? For example, a company needs an internal tool for their 500 employees, but can't afford to go through the process of conecting each device and compiling the app for each device individually...
If you want to sell customized apps to companies, you should consider the B2B program.
if you are in an enterprise that wants to deploy apps inside your company, the Enterprise Developer Program is a good choice.
For internal:
100 test devices.
alot of iphones with the distribution profile after the 100 devices
with the enterprise:
https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/

How to integrate skype feature in my native app

I want to integrate Skype APIs in my native app. Is that possible? I have Googled around and couldn't find a way to start. I know there are APIs available for Mac OS X.
Can I make use of those APIs for my iPhone app? I know it is possible, as many apps like Nimbuzz have integrated Skype APIs in their iPhone apps.
Skype has a Public API which you can reference. This page has a wealth of information on how to use the API and the various commands. There is no public framework which abstracts it any further so you'll need to investigate how to make the actual commands by deconstructing the various wrappers.
I don't think Skype wants to particularly bring their API wrappers to the iPhone because you'd be competing directly with their own application. They do provide Cocoa wrappers but those are in the form of a framework and you can't have your own custom frameworks in an iPhone Application (only Apple approved ones). Also relevant: Skype bans Nimbuzz and fring while faking stats
SkypeKit sounds like what you want.
SkypeKit prohibits development on iOS devices. What may be of use to you is the URI scheme, This should let you open the skype App on your iPhone and place a call.
For additional help visit the Skype Developer Forum

How can I target push notifications to both iPhone and Android?

I am developing apps for both Android and iPhone, and am looking for how I can push notifications to both (if you only have an answer for one, that's ok, I'm sure someone has an answer for the other).
For example, if I'm having a special on something and want to notify people so it sort of dings and a message pops up (I have a Groupon app that does that) how can I accomplish this? And do I have to reprogram each time, or can I do it through an RSS or something else?
For Android 2.2+ use C2DM. Apple also has a proprietary push notification service. In both cases you need to register with the company to use the system. Also in both cases you will need a web server able to communicate to Google and Apple.
If you don't want to have to support an entire server framework for communicating with both iOS and Android devices, take a look at UrbanAirship. It's a dirt-cheap service that allows you to push both plain- and rich- text messages to iOS, Android, and BlackBerry.
Gravy: It also has mechanisms for In-App Purchasing, and statistics tracking.
Maybe PushOver can be a solution https://pushover.net/ but there is probably other web services like that !

Iphone App vs. Offline Web App. Which way is the smartest?

I think about starting from scratch building a small application fullfilling two technical requirements:
should be usable on iPhone
should work offline
There are two obvious alternatives here to choose between
A real iPhone application with offline capabilities
A web app using HTML5 offline, Google Gears or similar
Having no iPhone app development experience (I don't own an iPhone), i wonder which way would be the easiest to go?
What are the learning curves for building offline HTML vs building an iPhone app?
Honestly, it depends what your app is going to do.
MobileSafari supports all the HTML5 offline stuff, so you could store data in a clientside SQL database, cache the application clientside, etc... The mobile Gmail app is probably the most notable example of that, giving you full-featured access to your Gmail even when offline. You can also use geolocation through JavaScript APIs that were added in 3.0. Web Clips let your web app share the home screen with native applications too. There is more on using web apps on the iPhone on this Stack Overflow post.
Obviously, doing a Web app will be of interest to people who like dealing with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (and possibly whatever language is running server-side). It is possible to do really neat stuff with offline Web apps, but its performance won't be as good as that of native apps, especially on pre-3GS devices.
Developing a native application will require you to learn Objective-C (or C# as soon as Mono Touch is available to the masses) and pay a $99 fee to be allowed to test on-device and deploy to App Store. A lot more of the system is exposed to you through the various APIs, such as the camera, compass, multitouch, and so on.
Objective-C is pretty simple to pick up if you're familiar with Java; you only really need to get used to the square bracket syntax and memory management and then it's pretty straight-forward.
Then there are the hybrid systems, like PhoneGap, which expose more of the device's APIs, provided the Web app runs in a special container app. It is also crossplatform, so you could also deploy the app on Android and BlackBerry if you wanted to. This still requires you to pay the App Store fee, but if you're more familiar with Web development, this gives you the best of both worlds.
I can't tell you too much about HTML apps in general, but I can tell you that the API for the UIWebView is extremely minimal, and of course there is much less you can do than in a native iPhone application.
An HTML5 offline app would have security issues as you would have to hard code your oauth secret into code that anyone could see ( by clicking view source, or inspecting in Firebug ). You could simply use http auth, but then you get the ugly "from API" credit with every tweet sent from your app, and also that ugly http auth popup from the browser.