Is there a way to launch Voice Control programmatically just like you can launch Safari? If so, how?
Other apps can be opened only if there is a URL scheme they've registered. This is how you can open Safari or Mail or even Maps programmatically, but not arbitrary applications. The list of Apple supported applications with URL schemes are documented here.
Unfortunately, Voice Control does not have a documented URL scheme, so it cannot be launched programmatically.
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I would like to enable interaction between a native iOS application and the Safari browser such that tapping a right click on an image on a webpage provides an option in the context menu to send the image to another custom written native iOS application for further processing and/or storage.
However, according to this article from Safari Developer Library, “Safari extensions are not currently supported on iOS”.
Is there any other alternative to achieve the above functionality?
You have multiple choices here:
You could register in your application's Info.plist file that your app known how to handle certain type of documents (see here in Apple's doc). This way when your iPhone encounters this document type, iOS will propose the user to open this document in your app; for example if you register for the PDF type and you then tap on a PDF document as an attachment in a mail, you app will be listed in the proposed menu and will then be opened with the document as a parameter.
But it seems that even if this works perfectly for any type like DOC, PDF, or even custom types, it does not work for images, which seems to be handled in a separate way by iOS :(
A simpler way would be to register, still in your application's Info.plist, any custom URL schemes. See here and below in the Apple's doc. For example when, anywhere in your iPhone (either in your own app, or in another third-party app, including Safari), it encounters URLs like "myapp://xxx/yyy/zzz", it opens your app, passing this URL as an argument. You can then do whatever you want with this URL.
The solution then is to add some code in your web page so that when the image is tapped, you ask Safari to open the URL "myimageditor://edit?url=http://www.url.of/your/image.jpg". If you registered for the "myimageeditor://" URL scheme, you app will then open with the URL in the parameters, and you then will be able to retrieve the image using the embed URL.
I think it is possible only for jailbroken devices.
For instance, could a web app access the mic on an iPhone and transmit voice back to a server?
Or is it possible to build Safari extensions for the iPhone that can operate transparently on a web page? For instance, is it possible to build an extension that removed ads from Google result pages for the iPhone, without the user clicking any buttons to activate the ad-removal functionality?
You pretty much hit the main limitations.
You have no access to hardware that's not supported by HTML5 (geolocation is, but things such as acceleration and audio/video recording are not).
You can't build Safari extensions for the iPhone at this time, you can only use JavaScript like usual.
Some frameworks like PhoneGap make attempts to provide more hardware features via a native app container, but it appears Apple is trying to prevent those apps from going on the App Store, to some extent.
Is it possible to open another app, like Camera, from a third-party app? I know there are URL schemes - http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes - but I just want to open an app, not send any data to the app.
Unfortunately, no. Launch Services is private API on the iPhone. You application can launch another app only through trying to open a URL registered by that app or a file document the app understands. However, as far as I know, your app has no control over or knowledge about which app exactly will handle the URL or the file.
One way to fire up the camera from within your app, of course, is the UIImagePickerController class.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/uikit/reference/UIImagePickerController_Class/UIImagePickerController/UIImagePickerController.html
It's not quite what you're asking, but it might be as close as you're going to get.
I have a query regarding launching a native application from a link of website on iPhone.
I will explain.
Generally a web based application is used to work online without using any feature of iPhone device (such as GPS, Camera, Accelerometer etc.)
I have a iPhone specific website which performs many tasks online.
Now while keeping all the functionality same, I want to add a feature of taking a picture from iPhone in-built camera.
i.e. when user clicks a button on website "Take Picture", my native application should be launched, which will take a picture and do specific tasks..
How to capture a event of button click which is performed on website?
Should I use UIWebView or Safari?
I know that using URL Scheme we can launch Safari from native application.
But how to achieve the opposite as explained above?
All other functionality works great on website, so I don't want to convert the whole website into native application.
(Otherwise I will have to deal with web services). Only this functionality needs to be added.
Register a URL Handler, then have a link on your site to myapphandle://some.parameters.here/
A la: http://iosdevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-application-via-a-custom-url-scheme.html
This sounds odd. In fact, it sounds like a security risk to me. However, I would swear that I have seen web pages that you can click a link on and it opens the app store on the iPhone.
My question is, is it possible to launch any application from through a web page? Can parameters be passed to the application? I do not need technical details. I'm just curious if it is possible.
Thank you,
Yes. From Control and configuration of applications through Info.plist - Invoking your iPhone application by URL:
Invoking your iPhone application by URL
The CFBundleURLTypes key allows you to specify URL schemes that will cause the iPhone to switch to your application. No, you can't override the schemes for the built-in applications.
If your application is launched using a URL type named scheme, then you can also provide a different startup image "Default-scheme.png" instead of the regular "Default.png".
See iPhone file extension app association for more details.