The google earth API looks awesome. Unfortunately you can't use it on the iPhone/iPad, because the UIWebView does not allow plug-in's.
The functionality as rendered in maps.google.com - earth view is amazing. What is the technical reason for using a plug-in vs doing something with just AJAX/native? Is it a technical hurdle, or a business thing?
Related
I've been using my iphone to surf the internet a couple of times, and I've noticed that some websites had some plugins on their site, I've been trying to find these for my own website but couldn't find them.
The plugin I'm interested in is kind of a 'Coverflow' effect,
it's completely based on the touch screen, and looked about the same on every site I've seen it on. that's why I'm assuming it's a.. built in plugin or something like that.
I've also noticed that these sites have an iphone styled toolbar and menus, well I'd be grateful if you could help me find that plugin,
Would also be nice if you could explain about it a little or show me more plugins that are available out there for the iPhone's safari
I don't know about any plugin in Mobile Safari, but you can use some Frameworks to build apps with touch-events. For example:
http://jqtouch.com/
http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/
These frameworks often offer much features, which you can use to let your web app look like a normal iPhone-App.
Anyone with experience using the Cloudmade api for iphone apps? I'm being asked if it's feasible to incorporate custom voices for the turn by turn navigation it offers.
Any advice appreciated!
Basically, you can get the turn-by-turn routing as an XML (see documentation) and feed the instructions to the Text-to-Speech engine (I'm afraid there's nothing out-of-the-box for iPhone, so I'd suggest you give a try to Flite or a similar).
I'm not sure Cloudmade SDK does anything different than that, also incorporating some TTS engine in their SDK. For sure, this is exactly what I did for an Android application myself for turn-by-turn routing.
I'm trying to list Web features (HTML, CSS, Javascript, APIs)
that can be used for mobile web pages, things we don't usually
use on Desktop browsers.
So far, I have:
geolocation
orientation
viewport (width, scale)
touch-events
tap-highlight-color
map and youtube links open in a dedicated app
tel: links support
specific keyboard layout depending on the form (type=number, email, ...)
What do I miss here?
The question would be: "If I am a Desktop Web developer, what should I consider to build a mobile version of my website?"
Actually, a lot of these are already in the HTML5 standard. They are not, in fact, Android/iPhone specific.
For example, the following are part of the HTML5 spec:
Geolocation: already implemented in Gecko (Firefox) and Webkit (Safari/Chrome)
Viewport: accessible using Javascript
Number/email/phone number-specific fields: implemented in part by several browsers
Your major concern when dealing with mobile versions of your site (assuming you mean touch-enabled smartphone) is the size of your icons/buttons/text/controls/etc. Anything else, including multi-touch, is simply an extra.
As for other extras, you could consider using something like JQTouch (http://www.jqtouch.com/) to provide a more "native" look and feel on the mobile client. JQTouch provides things like native animations, AJAX interface, specialized buttons/toggles/text fields, and themes that make iPhone web apps look better. It should also work on Android, since its browser is also based on Webkit.
For more information on iPhone/Android web frameworks, see http://distractable.net/coding/iphone-android-web-application-frameworks/.
Im developing for both iPhone and Android. For iPhone im using iUI to show what the user interface would look like from a browser. Does anyone know if there is a similar javascript/css library which would allow me to mock up the Android interface?
I think you can just use iUI. This guy has an Android theme for iUI - go to Theme Switcher and select Android to see what it looks like.
Not sure what the license is on the css. You should probably ask him.
Im developing for both iPhone and
Android. For iPhone im using iUI to
show what the user interface would
look like from a browser.
Hi! Good choice :)
The Android theme for iUI is not perfect to me but you can use it at its current state.
This theme is now part of the iUI official source tree so feel free to grab it using Hg on the Google code project page. Since it's now part of iUI, it's released under New BSD license.
Does anyone know if there is a similar
javascript/css library which would
allow me to mock up the Android
interface?
http://code.google.com/p/iui/source/browse/#hg/web-app/iui/ext-sandbox/t/android
Have fun :)
Im actually using that to do the
development on the phones themselves
but need an admin page on an ordinary
web site that can simulate what the
controls would look like on android
and iphone.
Then you should also dynamically replace all form elements with custom designed divs, for both iPhone and Android.
Remi
Yeah, there is no Android version, per se - but iUI works just fine. I use it for web-based apps on both Android and iPhone all the time.
jQTouch is also a good solution, but it's considerably less attractive on Android, simply because the page transitions are all geared toward iPhone.
I noticed that the default phonegap (now cordova) app looks alot like an android app. If you want some quick and dirty try that maybe.
Heres a png screen shot:
http://www.thesearethedroids.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/PhoneGap_screen.png
The code associated with this book has the equivalent to iui, more or less:
Pro Android Web Apps
Develop for Android using HTML5, CSS3 & JavaScript
By Damon Oehlman , Sébastien Blanc
http://www.apress.com/programming/css/9781430232766
I am going to develop a content rich application that ideally should have been an iPhone-app, but since I'm short on time, I will stick with technologies that I can, such as JQuery, CSS and HTML. The more mobile devices my site runs on besides iPhone, the better.
A brief search on the web leaves me with the impression that there are three tools I may use: iWebkit, JQTouch and iUI. I have toyed about with JQTouch, which I find impressive and simple to use.
With simplicity comes lack of customizability; I would very much like to have sliders and other cool features in my GUI.
Any comments on which of these three to go for?
I've talked about this subject a couple of days ago in a WebTuesday meeting, here are the slides of the presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/akosma/webtuesday-mobile-web-applications-framework-overview
I talk about the following frameworks / technologies:
iUI
jQTouch
WebApp.net
iWebKit
SproutCore / Cappuccino
Yahoo! Blueprint
I personally have used iUI, and then later jQTouch, which I literally fell in love with.
I actually just finished writing and article comparing iUI and jQTouch. In my opinion, go with jQTouch because it covers a greater selection of WebKit browser phones like the Palm Pre, Droid and Nexus One.
It will be a slightly larger in file size because it includes the core jQuery library. But if you are already using jQuery in your site, that shouldn't matter.
You check out my article here: http://www.heinencreative.com/archives/articles/iui-vs-jqtouch/
I have done a short list of frameworks for this type of development see here and am working on an article comparing but the holiday and work intervened.
Personally i have done a site in iUI which was a conversion from a Mac Widget, so reused a lot of code. It was relatively easy to do, the code is solid (for iUI) and there is a site where there is support.
JQTouch looks good and so does iWebkit. Quickconnect is well supported and has a book associated with it (which by now should be wildly out of date) and Quickconnect claims to be useable for other mobile platforms as well.
Only hasving lloked i would probably go for JQTouch next time around as it will have mainstream support just with it being based on JQuery.
jQTouch and iUI work with QuickConnect Hybrid framework and PhoneGap.
jQTouch is jQuery web GUI framework for mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, Android, etc.).
iUI is javascript web GUI framework for mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, Android, etc.).
While QuickConnect and PhoneGap are Hybrid framework for mobile devices. For example in iOS, QuickConnect and PhoneGap use Xcode + iOS SDK + Javascript, while in Android, the two use Java + Android SDK + Javascript.
I use these frameworks, jQTouch is better than iUI at the moment. QuickConnect is also better than PhoneGap. However, PhoneGap is popular since it address other mobile OSes aside from iOS and Android. QuickConnect has support for iOS and Android.
I've gone with JQTouch for some prototyping as it seemed the best fit, and the most convenient for my needs.
Yet I would not recommend to build your main business around a webbased iPhone app. Even though it has quite a good set of features, it just doesn't feel responsive enough, and getting to get the app look perfectly like UX designed it can be some pain in the ass, as not the whole set of iPhone UI elements are implemented.
Yet I have to say that it was a matter of minutes to get a service-consuming app running that looks like a real iPhone app.
Jqtouch has the community support and also certain very helpful libraries now for persistence HTML5 support with inmemory db and even more so very fluid appearence.
I've started with iUI a way back but i'm now using jQTouch wich i find much better, specially if you like working with jQuery like me. Havent tried iWebkit though, but from what i've seen of it it can't compete with JQT.