This is really just a "what-if" type question, so forgive me if it is either ridiculous or ridiculously easy...
I have a client whose site offers a "chat with a consultant" option that you see on many sales and support sites. We were wondering if there was a way that iPhone users (or any user, in theory, but mostly iPhone) could click this option and after giving the basic form info (name, question,etc) the actual chat itself could open up in the chat client.
Is this as simple as the "click here to send me an AIM message" syntax?
The XMPP (jabber) server is Openfire and the webchat uses the Fastpath plugin. Would this feature need to be enabled deeper than the page's HTML/PHP? Does the server/plugin need to modified as well?
Would this threaten the security of the XMPP server (which is behind a firewall and can only be accessed externally via the above plugin)?
Does this even sound like something that iPhone users would appreciate, or would it simply be confusing/obtrusive?
Sorry for the objective last question, but I'd hate to spend time on this only irritate users.
Referrals to resources and documentation welcome. I'm not looking for someone to walk me through the whole thing, I just want to get an idea of it can be done and where to start reading.
I'm a little confused by what you want to do - the user fills out a form on a web site and then they are put into a "chat room" on their iPhone?
This is possible. However all of them require that the user has already installed your app, so it may be a hurdle to what you are trying to do.
However if it's using a pre-existing chat service (such as AIM), you may already be OK if the user already has a chat client installed on their iPhone. You could launch the app using custom urls or push notifications - however, this is assuming that the app developer has enabled such hooks, and if so if they are published.
If you want to go with your own client, if the user is filling out the form on the iPhone, then on submission you could redirect them to a custom url for your application. From mobile Safari, this will directly launch your app. Note that the user must already have the app installed for this to work, or else they'll see an error, and it won't be a particularly user-friendly one.
Another way, if the user is filling out the form on their computer, is via push notification. Again, they must first have the app installed. They would receive a notification that, on acceptance, launches your app.
The final way, if the user is filling out the form on their computer, is that they would have to download your app first and run it, so that it could communicate with a desktop client of yours via network services.
Related
I'd like to be able to send invitation in an email to a specific "event" happening inside my iOS app. So I figured I'd need to use custom URL. That's fine.
But I'd also like to be able to handle the user that doesn't have the app installed yet, to be taken to a mobile Safari and to the webpage with installation instructions for the app.
What would be the best way to do it?
I could try the following:
In the email I send a link to a http://www.example.com/joinevent/?id=foo
User is taken to a Safari webpage that sends a redirect to mycustomscheme://joinevent/?id=foo
If the user doesn't have the app installed this redirection won't work and he stays in the Safari - I could then handle the displaying of installation instructions probably.
But this approach doesn't seem "natural" for me. Is there a better/more native way to do it?
Try http://rdrct.it
It is a web service that allows you to achieve exactly this functionality very easily.
Full disclosure - I created rdrct.it
Here's the basics:
Login to the site, create a project for your particular app. Choose a unique code (this could be the name of your app).
You'll then be provided with a URL in the form: http://rdrct.it/uniqueCode
Once you've done that, you need to register the app's ID in the app store, and also details about the custom URL scheme. Tick "Auto-redirect" - what it will then do is try to open the app, and if that fails, it will automatically send the user to the app store.
If the app is opened, then the querystring is also passed to the app, so in your example case, the device will have been served: mycustomscheme://joinevent/?id=foo
It also works across multiple device types, so if you have the app available for Blackberry, Android or Windows Phone, then it will also do the same for those depending on which device type the user is using.
Like I said, I created it, but it should solve your problem.
If you are using Distimo to track you app analytics, they provide a shortlink to your apps that can be used also used to track conversions. It shows a custom page depending on the device used to access. This is especially convenient if you have the same app published in the AppStore, Google Play, Amazon, etc.
I need to check WiFi is pass through web page login or not, but I don't know how to do.
So I need someone can help me or explain how to wifi via web page login. thanks.
On Android: You can implement your own RedirectHandler and then use it in an HttpClient to hit a website that should never be redirected. If you get redirected then this access point is likely a walled garden (no access to the internet, without further steps). After that you are unlikely to be able to simply log in for the user programmatically, since the user could be anywhere and may need to pay to use the internet: hotel, airplane, coffee shop. Instead the best course of action is to inform the user with a dialog that they will need to perform additional steps to reach the internet using the Wi-Fi access point they are currently connected to and then allow them to easily open the web browser to a website that will trigger the redirect such as www.google.com. I know this solution works because I've implemented it myself before.
On iPhone this probably isn't necessary since the iPhone already detects walled garden Wi-Fi access points as soon as the user connects to them and shows the browser. If the user fails to connect to the internet the iPhone disconnects the user from the Wi-Fi access point.
I have a link to a Facebook page from a website. I know I can use the URL scheme href="fb://" to open up the Facebook application from within an iPhone, but if the iPhone user does not have the native application installed, an ugly error message pops up. I would rather just send this user to the Facebook website.
There's gotta be a way to do this, but everything I've tried has had some short-coming:
Can't make a HEAD request to a different server
Can't run a try catch javascript function since the event leaves the client page
Can't seem to access information about the user's applications... or can I? I've read a bit about a cookie called "appInstalled" but can't find any real documentation about it.
Any ideas out there? Thanks a ton in advance.
Denis
Can a website determine if a device [iPhone] has certain applications installed ? I'm pretty sure that's a big NO because of privacy and security concerns.
Not a really technical answer, but you could change the user interface to give the user an option. For example, having:
Click here if you have the facebook application installed on your iPhone.
If you do not, click here to go through to the site.
Sorry that I cannot offer a "proper" solution, I'm not really that familiar with iPhone development.
I'm trying to glue information from a web page to an iPhone app that said web page suggests to download. I control both the web page and the downloadable app.
Scenario is like this:
User visits my web page, on which I recognize the user (he may have logged in, and I store his info in a cookie). I then present a link to him to an app in the App Store that he should download for "enhanced experience" of this web service of mine.
Now, when the user launches the downloaded app on his iPhone, I like to re-identify the user who previously visited said web page.
All would be easy if an iPhone app could read Safari's cookies. But it can't.
A somewhat lame solution could be that the web server stores the visitor's IP address and uses that to recognize him once he launches the iPhone app. But that's not reliable.
Another one would be to give the user a token (code) that he needs to remember and then re-enter in the app. Still quite awkward, I think.
Any better suggestions?
Simply put, you can't do this.
One thing you could consider is a custom URL scheme to launch the app. You could send the user an email that uses this custom link. However there's a couple of problems with this:
the user may not have the account that they used to register for your site set up on their iPhone. This might seem unlikely, but say the user signed up for your site 5 years ago with their Hotmail account and they have since switched to Gmail.
it's unlikely that the email would fit into their workflow. They would probably download the app and just launch it by touching the icon instead of clicking a link in a received email.
You could also put the custom URL as a link on your web page, but again, this won't fit into the workflow because they have to go to the App Store app to do the download.
Consider this - if you've got some sort of website that has an authentication step, it's probably a fair bet to say that the user is the type of person who already has an application such as Facebook installed on their iPhone. They are already used to the paradigm of having to enter their credentials into an application despite the fact that they may have already done it in Safari.
If you could read the unique iPhone device ID from javascript on your web page, you could look for that again when the application connected...
But I cannot find any means of reading this from Javascript in Mobile Safari, I thought I'd post in case there is a way now to give you another option to consider.
OK, we found a somewhat working solution: The html code can create a cookie. Later, when the app runs, it can't directly read that cookie, of course (due to the sandboxing of iPhone apps). However, it can connect to the server, then open a http URL pointing to the server and including a unique token that it has gotten from the server beforehand. This leads to launching Safari, accessing the server. The server can now read the aforementioned cookie and finally establish the connection with the help of the token.
Just stumbled over this question and I'm curious if you thought about using a UIWebView.
Where the question is - does UIWebView share cookies with safari?
If it does the rest should be easy.
UIWebView's DON'T share cookies with Safari. So unfortunately that is not an option.
I know about test accounts, but during beta I'd like to allow access only to my friends, and then later friends-of-friends, and then only eventually Kevin Bacon and his friends.
That would probably suck, wouldn't it? The app would be listed (is there a way to prevent listing?) and someone I don't know might try it and get a "sorry, this is in development message." I imagine they'd be irritated and not come back.
From what I've read, only a few apps take off, but when they take off, they REALLY take off. Do developers just release these things fully baked?
Anyone start out with OpenSocial or other smaller-than-Facebook networks?
Any ideas for a soft, gradual, restricted roll-out?
Once you've set up your application, there is a setting in the Developer application control panel for your app: Your app -> Advanced -> Sandbox Mode.
Sandbox mode lets you restrict access to only those people listed as developers (under the Basic section).
In terms of expanding the app, Facebook doesn't provide much more flexibility that the Sandbox mode. Unfortunately, adding everyone as Developers of the app doesn't work very well for a beta, as people can access the application control panel once they are a developer. I ended up putting a whitelist of Facebook Ids into the front controller of my application for a previous beta, and it worked fairly well.
The apps are only listed in the App Directory if you submit them and they are accepted. There's no issue about preventing listing, it's something you have to apply for.
As for restricting users, you can accomplish it with a script in the application that checks whether the currently logged-in user is within your restricted user set. For example, if you only want friends of yourself, check whether the current user is friends with your user id. If not, simply display an error/message page or redirect them to the Facebook home page (or wherever). Add this check to the rest of the start-up logic run each page (such as connecting to your DB and authenticating with Facebook).
What I have done in some cases is keep a database table with the user id's of users who are allowed access, essentially a "whitelist". If the user isn't in the table, redirect them.