Is it possible to Launch Safari without having the app close? Just like the in-app email compose window.
I'm aware of how to display a webpage in UIWebView. I'd like to use a full web browser, i.e. Safari.
You can use a UIWebView to display web content in your app.
You can create a UIWebView with the URL to display. It will follow any links that the user touches, but that won't give you the address bar, search, navigation buttons, bookmarks or the page (tab) control. Those you'll have to add yourself, but odds are you don't want all of that. (Do you really need Google searches in your app?)
Creating a controller to manage a UIWebView and as much or as little navigation as you need is pretty easy. With a little planning, your custom controller class will also a good thing to keep in your library for the next app.
No you can not make use of the full Safari from within your own application. Your application must terminate for Safari to open.
In iPhone OS 2.0 you also had to terminate in order to send e-mails, so some chance exists that Apple couls open up Safari in the same way for iPhone OS 4.0. Make sure to request it at http://bugreport.apple.com if you are eager.
The second best option currently available is to roll your own "Browser view controller" using UIWebView. Let it have back, forward, stop/reload buttons, and an extra button for opening in Safari if the user is not content. This is how many of the greatest apps our there, like Tweetie, does it.
Related
I have a native iPhone app, which has a UIWebView component to it. I am trying to see if I can replicate the "Add to Home Screen" button that is present in the tab bar options in Safari.
Is this possible inside a UIWebView within a native app?
Thanks!
Brett
[I presume your question is about replicating the action associated with add to home screen, rather than replicating the appearance of the button itself (which being pedantic is what you actually wrote).]
As others have said this isn't possible.
What you could do is programatically launch Safari from within your app and give it the URL of a page to load which is your page.
When your page is loaded it has some sort of animation and shows the user where the add to home screen button is and tell them to press it after clicking a link which is displayed in your web page. When the users click on the link it takes them to whatever page it is that you would like saved to the desktop, and you hope they follow your instructions.
If you register your app to handle a proprietary url scheme the users can get back to your app from within Safari by clicking on a link using your app's url scheme.
The web pages that you seed Safari with must however be remote pages, you cannot give Safari a page in your app's bundle or that your app has downloaded as Safari cannot read pages from your app's sandbox.
The short answer is no, you can't. Apple does not let you.
Here's a similar question which may help you come up with other possibilities:
Javascript for "Add to Home Screen" on iPhone?
If I had to think of a work around off the top of my head, you could create an javascript pop-up which instructs them how to. It could say something like tap this button to go to mobile safari then tap action -> add to home screen.
Execute the Javascript with UIWebView's method:
- (NSString *)stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:(NSString *)script
Hope this helps.
You can use UIActivityViewController with your url as the activity items
NSArray *activityItems = #[title, url];
And then you can exclude the activities that you don't want. I think it´s the only way for now.
I know how to open an URL from app in Safari using [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];. This is great, but what I need to do is that I have multiple URLs and I want to start Safari with more tabs opened with those URLs.
I tried calling openURL multiple times but it just opens Safari once and other urls are ignored.
Is there any way of opening multiple tabs in Safari from my app?
Thanks.
When you call UIApplication openURL:, your application will be put in the background and will no longer be allowed to perform these operations. I do not think that opening multiple tabs is something that iOS Safari supports. Tabs are probably implemented in a more memory-efficient way (i.e. loading only the tab you see, saving a picture of the others until you switch to them). It would help knowing why you want to open multiple tabs.
Some suggestions:
Open a link to a "launcher" page, which takes you to the page you want
Use UIWebView and implement the tabs yourself
Create a menu of some sorts in your app, opening only one page at once
In my app, when it runs for the first time, it shows a UIViewAlert and offers you to see the preferences for the app - and the user has 2 choices - yes or no. If the user hits no the alert fades away and the application continues running. I want to set it in such a way, that if the user hits yes, my app will go to the background, the settings tab of the app will be opened (I added a settings bundle to the app). Is it possible to do such a thing? Thanks!
No, this is not possible. But you can create a settings view in you app and show it instead of trying to open the settings app.
Normally, you do want to encourage users to use your app as long as possible, and making them quit your app yourself is not the best way to achieve that.
No, this isn't possible.
But you could use InAppSettingsKit and modally show a view controller with the settings inside the app.
You can find out more here - http://www.inappsettingskit.com/
such that when the user open the application the website referenced will be loaded in the web browser
I know the code the will open a URL with in an application
[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://www.apple.com"]];
But this is not what I need I need the application to display the web browser within its form.
If you are only to show one page I suggest you should use ModalViewController to present the page inside your app and put a UIWebView in it.
If you are to render the web page as an application than you should use UIWebView
If you want to present some pages but also want to make use of navigation functions of the safari inside your app you can use DLWebView framework which suppors ModalView with navigation function.
Here you can watch the video how it works: http://dlinsin.github.com/2011/04/24/DLWebView.html
You need UIWebView class : UIWebView Class Reference
Also you can try to search for a ready webview with all needful buttons.
Have you looked into UIWebView?
If you need browser functionality within your own app, you will need to create your own, i.e. it's not possible to embed the Safari browser within a view in your own app.
our app loads profile pages from our website INSIDE the app. They have been optimized for iPhone css, but they are still an html page. Our mailto link isnt working as expected.
When clicked, nothing happens. However, when clicked and held (tap and hold), the menu slides up with "new message", "create new contact", "copy", etc.
How should this be formatted to get the Mail.app to automatically launch?
<a class="action_bubble" target="_blank" rel="external" href="mailto:bob#bob.com">Send Email</a>
The "call" link works as expected.
<a class="action_bubble" href="tel:1234567890">Call</a>
So, not sure what to do with this...
Here is a project on GitHub that addresses your issue. Basically, when you use a UIWebView controller, you need to decide how to manage the links using the delegate handler for UIWebView. In Interface Builder you can have it automatically recognize phone numbers which is probably why your phone numbers work and it will recognize http links as default behavior. However, mailto and some of the other special href options will need to be handled manually.
make sure "Detection" property is set for your UIWebView like "Phone","Address". you can set it from your IB.
or from code
self.webView.dataDetectorTypes = UIDataDetectorTypeAll;
Could it be, that you have just tried within the simulator? The simulator does not have a mail app, so it couldn't be opened. Try on a device. I think your code actually works.
I've just tested on a device: your code works.
A little late to the party but I've found out the following:
iOS has some weird ways to deal with web content
DON'T encapsulate your email address within an A tag, just put it there as plain text
Make sure that in your storyboard (if using one) the webView has the Addresses property checked and you're done ... same goes for phone numbers