I'm using Apple iPhone Configuration Utility to configure in-company mobile phones. I'd like to add to home screen an icon for a in-house web application we have developed. Using the Web Clip section, it's easy to add the webclip to home screen, however, we have two issues:
The webclip doesn't show up the png icon defined for the page (in meta tags).
The page loads up in Safari but is not "stand-alone" (fullscreen) (same thing, this property is defined in meta tags).
Note these issues are not encountered when adding the webclip to the home screen directly from Safari Mobile on the device.
Best
Use the iPhone Configuration Utility. There, in the section for web clip you can set full screen and and the icon. As far as I remember, you need to have those things set there and in the meta tags.
We use this feature quiet a lot and it works very well.
Related
I don't know if this is specific to the newest update of IOS 13, but I'm having some really strange PWA behavior. When I initially add it to my homescreen, links on the page open in safari rather than inline on the PWA (none of the links are set to __blank by the way), but when I sign in with oAuth on safari and then add it to my homescreen, it functions like it should and it works normally with links. (Currently using Passport with Node and Express for authentication) I don't know if there's some security infrastructure or something to do with packets, but it's really strange and I'd like to resolve this as soon as I can before my userbase gets frustrated.
I've tried looking through my manifest but everything is up to spec as far as PWA standards go. I have the display set to standalone, I have all my tags setup correctly, Lighthouse audit also says it should work. I've looked through the passport docs, traced my authentication code, but nothing seems to work.
It looks like Apple changed the home screen/standalone web app behavior in iOS 13, but I cannot find any official documentation on this. Now it seems that if you did not have a manifest.json setup before the web app was added to the home screen, it only treats the initial page as being in scope for the standalone view. Hence any other link/redirect opens in another window or the in-app browser.
We have a web app installed on our user's home screens that was written years ago and functioned just fine up until iOS 13 without a manifest.json file. I had to rewrite the WebSQL code in our app to use IndexedDB instead since they completely dropped WebSQL from home screen web apps in iOS 13, even with WebSQL re-enabled in the Safari advanced setting. When I started testing on an iPhone, any link or redirect, even using window.location.assign or any number of other methods would always open the next page in an in-app browser with a minimal UI. This also messed with the page geometry as what was a full height page with no scrolling, was now scrollable with our 'Next' button elements pushed off the bottom of the screen. Since we have some scrollable panels in the middle of some pages it wasn't obvious how to get to the end of the page (you have to scroll a fixed element to scroll the whole page) so that was not going to work for our users.
Long story short, adding a bare minimum manifest.json file to the web app (doesn't even need the scope setting) and deleting and re-adding the web app to the home screen then makes it behave as before with all pages showing in the standalone view. Adding a manifest.json to an already installed home screen app does not affect the behavior.
I want to implement a settings screen on the iPhone with images and hyperlinks, like the one for the twitter settings in the standard settings.
I can specify textfields and titles, but i cannot seem to incorporate hyperlinks and images into them. Does anyone know how this can be done?
Thanx in advance!
John.
You can't add some image or url to your bundle settings (at least the conventional way).
Here's is a list of what is available :
https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/UserDefaults/Preferences/Preferences.html
Twitter app does not have an external setting bundle (= settings from the general settings menu) but an in-app settings controller. Of course, with an in-app controller, you can have a nicer control of your views and have some dynamic entries.
EDIT :
From iOS 5, Twitter app is a native application. It setting entry is in the second section of general setting menu (not in the third one, as other app). Like iPod, Safari or Photos, for example. Obviously, native applications can make a lot more stuff than our poor appstore applications, like controlling the system, or display images, links and webviews in settings.
I'm creating a Mobile App with JQM and JSP I'm using Bookmark bubble to do this, but I just want to ensure I understand what is happening behind the scenes here.
Is the static HTML generated by my JSP saved locally on the iPhone?
Does clicking on the APP always get fresh info from my online server or does it cache?
I'm assuming it still uses Safari to render? And just hides the toolbar etc?
If instead of hosting this online, I packaged it as an Apple App and it went on App store,
would the device still use safari to render it?
Thanks!
Documentation is at: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/OfflineApplicationCache/OfflineApplicationCache.html
It's possible to cache the page(s) locally.
I know I can use the apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style meta tag and after adding the web page to the home screen, it will run the app in full screen mode.
My question is if there is any tag, css or javascript I can use to tell mobile safari to do it directly, without having the user adding to the home screen first?
You could consider something like PhoneGap that deploys a webapp as a native iphone application. It would also allow you access to things like the accelerometer via javascript calls.
Currently, and sadly, this can't be done :(
There is a way of automatically installing 'webclips' on your idevice.
You do this by deploying a profile payload to your device (.mobileconfig file).
Payloads can be signed or unsigned, for testing purpose unsigned profiles will come up as Insecure.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/iPhoneConfigurationProfileRef/Introduction/Introduction.html
The advantage using a profile like this is that you can set it so the user cannot remove the 'webclip' in the standard way, having to remove the profile to remove the app. You can also protect this with a PIN.
One reason I didn't use this method for registering my apps was that I couldn't get it working offline with appcache manifests (iOS6.x), however this may have improved since iOS7.x
I have a fairly standard ASP.Net web application which is used via mobile safari on the iPhone.
Some users who have a link to the web application placed on their desktop via profile are reporting that when navigating between pages (which I do on the server with Response.Redirect after specific events or via standard anchor tags in other cases (no target specified)) that Safari opens a new window instead of reusing the existing window.
Because of this, any login token/cookie etc (i'm using the built-in ASP.Net membership stuff), is now gone for that new browser window and the login prompt is shown.
The problem doesn't happen every time, and I can't seem to replicate it on my device (but i'm not deploying the shortcut via profile)
As you can probably imagine, it's quite frustrating for the users to have to log in every time, and you can't fix an issue you can't replicate.
My question is, has anyone heard of this issue and/or know a workaround?
The app is NOT iPhone specific, that is, it is used in a full desktop browser as well, and the logins stay like you'd expect there - and the same window is reused repeatedly.
I've considered a few possibilities, but have been drawing a blank as far as what might be causing this or how I can resolve it.
Do you have any iPhone meta tags set (to remove the url bar or the toolbar, for instance?) If you do, the phone will assume it's a native web app, and urls will open in a new safari window, like they would for any other native app.
If you are taking advantage of using the web app in full screen mode (where it is bookmarked to the launch screen next to native apps) you can prevent it from jumping out of fullscreen mode by and in to safari replacing type links with javascript.
location.href = '/yourPath';
This is a nifty trick which even works if you are linking to an outside URL, like doing an OAuth to Facebook and back.
I have a blog post on this here: http://www.aaroncoleman.net/post/2011/07/29/Keeping-iPhone-Web-App-in-Fullscreen-mode-from-Homescreen-Launcher.aspx