I want to develop a mobile web application using asp.net 3.5 that can be viewed on an iPhone but there is no longer a template in VS2008 to enable mobile development. Can this be done ?
the iphone uses the "regular" version of your website so developing a "mobile" version would nto accomplish what you're looking for. You should check the browser headers and redirect people to the iPhone version of your site if you detect mobile safari.
http://iphone.facebook.com/
Another option (if you're using MVC) is to have your controller detect the browser and show a different view if it catches mobile safari. This way you wouldn't need a duplicate site, just two sets of views.
A web application (via Asp.Net 3.5) would be accessible over the Internet and would be accessible via the iPhone's Safari browser. There isn't anything truly special you need for it unless you want to make a true web application for mobile devices like the iPhone and Blackberries. In that case, you are looking purely at design aspects since it's still just a website. Due to the diversity of mobile browser capabilities, you'll need to do some research to find out what is recommended for the specific mobile browsers you want to access (the BBC's website comes to mind as a good example of mobile rendering).
Ultimately, the user agent is evaluated by your system and then it renders (or redirects) appropriately. Everything else is design if you want the page to render differently for the iPhone than any other browser on the web.
If you can get your hands on a copy of .Net magazine (a.k.a. Practical Web Design in the U.S.) issue 178, there is a great article on what you need to be aware of when doing mobile development and how the iPhone's browser is a lot different than others.
The iPhone (at least mine which is the 3G version) have full support for "normal" web apps with Ajax and everything. So mostly any Ajax library would be 100% compatible with the iPhone, at least as long as the Ajax library is focusing on Open Standards and such...
[Shameless-Plug I work with Ra-Ajax]
Ra-Ajax have 100% support for iPhone except for "dragging and dropping" which interferes with scrolling on the iPhone. This means that you can use Ra-Ajax (which is an LGPL licensed and Free of Charge library for ASP.NET) to create a "normal" website which will work 100% perfectly (except for dragging and dropping, which is used in e.g. Ra-Windows etc) on the iPhone...
Even the really "advanced" stuff like our Ajax Calendar sample works flawlessly with the iPhone :)
Related
I have an ASP.NET (not MVC) application.
I would like to create a version that is optimised for browsers on the IPhone and on Android.
Some questions
Is it possible to detect IPhone/Android when the site is accessed
Are there any gotchas/tips for developing ASP.NET for these devices.
We're using a combination of .net webforms and jQuery mobile.
For our viewstate, it's been pretty well neutered already so only minor stuff is going down to the device.
Bear in mind that there are around 3 different mobile api's. Each of which has their own drawbacks. You might want to investigate each.
Also, we took the approach that the mobile site was a completely different website than our standard one. When the user comes in, we do some browser sniffing and push them to mobile if it matches with a link to move back to the full one if they want.
Webforms aren´t good for mobile, it generates big pages because viewstate. And you can´t control rendering (some more in .net4).
You can detect device using a db of capabilities like WURFL (I recommend 51degrees) o maybe using some like http://detectmobilebrowser.com/
I don´t know what kind of webapp but you could make a new app, maybe using MVC. Please look this resource.
What is a hybrid app for mobiles? What is basic architecture to follow while developing? What are the components? What will be the back end and what will be the UI? Is it for only iPhone or can be for any mobile device?
With iOS, you can create an application that combines features of native applications and webpages.
A hybrid application is a native iPhone application that provides most of its structure and functionality through a web viewing area, but also tends to contain standard iOS user interface elements.
A hybrid application gives users access to web content with an element called a web view (described in “Web Views”).
Precisely how you use a web view in your application is up to you, but it’s important to avoid giving users the impression that your application is merely a mini web browser.
A hybrid application should behave and appear like a native iPhone application; it should not draw attention to the fact that it depends upon web sources.
You can create Phonegap app and still using native controls of cocoa for powerful features like Mapkit api, UIWebview (Childbrowser plugin) etc
A hybrid app is a mobile application in which the same app can be worked in different mobile operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows, etc…, and even in browsers (Mozilla, Chrome, IE, etc.. ). It is the same as mobile applications for users, which can be installed from App Store or Google Play store. But technically it’s different, its works with a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
More read-: http://webduratech.com/what-is-hybrid-app-how-it-can-help-small-scale-business/+
A hybrid application blends web views (loading a webpage into the app) and native code together to create a single seamless application. In most cases it is faster than developing the entire app in native code, because developing for the web is easier (there are tons of web frameworks and it is just easier to develop good looking content on the web vs via native code, such as swift).
Ex: Amazon uses web views for the products page on the iOS app, being able to reuse the code on iOS, Android and the web saves them a ton of time.
In a hybrid app, the core of the app (navigation, location) are normally done in native code and stuff such as showing images and information is generally done via web views.
Since web views are a web page, you can develop them in any HTML 5 framework you would like to use.
The most important part is to have an app that works and runs super well for your users, and having web views in the app is very tricky, but a huge time saver.
I am considering developing an Iphone/Android application but I want the information on it to be live and uniform between platforms... Therefore it seemed logical to me to make it web based. I would however like to be able to achieve certain non web based functions such as adding events to the calendar and gps locations on the the mapping sortware.
My questions are:
Can I make a web based
application that does not visually
show in a browser?
Can I add additional functions that
are not natively available in a
browser e.g <a href="#"
title="adddate:110911"/>Add to
Calendar</a>
Would it be a lot of work to make
such an app as the majority is web
based (I mostly progam in PHP so
coding for Android and Iphone will
take me some time to get my head
around).
All of the questions are for both Iphone and Android.
Thanks
I would recommend using a cross platform solution like phonegap (with UI sencha touch on top of it).
You can have an app that is a thin shell over the system browser, and exposes the non-Web bits of functionality to the contained HTML via JavaScript interfaces. You will still need two different codebases for iPhone and Android, but the essense of the app will be still webby.
There's no way to manage the system calendar from Web apps neither on iPhone nor on Android, AFAIK.
I'm beginning the process of learning the ins and outs of developing sites for mobile web browsers. Are there any good resources/communities online that discuss mobile specific site development issues?
My initial understanding is that to cover different phones you need to build one site that is enabled for browsers with the webkit engine (iphone, android, etc.) and another more basic site for other older browsers, is this assumption correct?
Also what does developing for webkit mean exactly? How is it different than just using javascript/css/html? Is it the same except that you limit yourself to webkit specific functions and css? I looked on the webkit site, but it didn't explain it in those terms.
Are there any other snafus I need to watch out for when developing for mobile browsers?
Your assumption is correct, you will need to develop multiple versions of your site targeted at different browser types.
Webkit is the engine used by Safari (mobile Safari), Chrome, and Andriod Browser (mobile Chrome?) you can use standard Javascript, XHTML, and CSS, the main thing, is making your site "fat-finger-friendly" since these devices are all driven by touch screens.
What I mean by "fat-finger-friendly" is that you have large links/buttons that are easy to hit with your finger, most mobile browsers are good at approximating which link you intended to touch, but if you have alot of stuff jammed together, it frequently gusses wrong.
Another consiteration is screen size, and thus the width/height of your site.
The best illustration I have of this is from Ars Technica -- checkout their site in your desktop browser, then check out their site in your mobile browser. Its a very slick version of the site. (http://www.arstechnica.com/)
Webkit is rendering engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. It provides the set of classes to display the web content in windows and implement different features which are provided by browser (such as links, fwd/backward etc).
You don't need to build the different sites for different rendering engines such as webkit. Designing of mobile web site should consider the screen size and how different components look/behave in different rendering engines.
Look at this question for more details of how to build the mobile friendly site.
If you want to support older browsers, then you should have multiple sites. But take a look at mobile browser stats first to decide if it's worth it. If you just want to make your existing website work for iPhone/Android or other phones with A-grade browsers, then you can customize with a mobile friendly CSS (for small screens). But to get good performance on mobile devices on slow/unreliable connections, you probably need to have a separate stripped down html.
Apple has a very good guide to help you optimize your site for iPhone. Most of it will also work on modern mobile browsers:
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/UsingtheViewport/UsingtheViewport.html
Peter Paul Koch has done an excellent research on different mobile browsers. He has several articles, but this one is a good start:
http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/browsers.html
Like Nate Bross mentioned, you should optimize for touch devices. Unfortunately it's very difficult to know if a device has touch or not, since there is no media query for it. You can do user agent sniffing for some devices, but I don't recommend it. More discussion here: Optimize website for touch devices
For the moment, I detect touch events (with an exception for Chrome). If this returns true, I inject a touch CSS. A bit nasty, but the other options are worse:
function() {
if( /Chrome/i.test(navigator.userAgent) ) {
return false;
}
try {
document.createEvent("TouchEvent");
return true;
} catch (e) {
return false;
}
}
You specifically asked for sites for mobile web browsers, but you might also check out the possibilities of creating a mobile web app. It looks like an iPhone app (or Android for that matter), but it's built with the help of HTML5. You can do pretty slick animations with the CSS3 in the webkit image, and iPhone also has meta tags to hide the Safari navigation toolbars. Users can then bookmark your page to their home screen, and it will work just like a normal iPhone app. Of course you're limited to the browser and it's performance. But you can create multiplatform apps :) HTML5 + JS is the only multi-mobile-platform language Steve Jobs approves, and with the help of PhoneGap you can even get it into the AppStore!
If web-app sounds interesting you should check out jQTouch, jQuery CSS Transition plugin and of course Building iPhone apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript by Jonathan Stark.
If your site is pretty simple (just content delivery) I'd suggest a service like mobify: http://mobify.me/
A lot of big publications use it, and I have too. In fact, Ars Technica (which Nate Bross pointed to in an earlier reply) uses this service to display their mobile content.
You have control over style, and that's about it, so if your site is more complex it might not be for you. Otherwise, it's a good service. You can have a mobile site up almost as quickly as it takes for the DNS for your mobile site's address to update.
I disagree that you need to build multiple versions of a Web site.
One simple HTML5 Web site will work across all mobile browsers and desktop browsers too.
The beauty of the latest developments of HTML5 is that you could use new Iphone/Android features like Geolocation, and older browsers will simply ignore the JS code if you carefully put it within try catch statements.
For "fat finger" type problems you can serve a different CSS which makes buttons bigger if you really must. Good browsers should make default buttons easy to press in any case.
Keep it simple and you won't have to see these fragmented & costly device dependent approaches. Write HTML5 by hand and use a validator. Good luck!
I'm looking to create a mobile version of our website/web app. What's a good way to provide the best, most fully featured version.
Part of the reason for creating it is instead of an iPhone app, so I'd like to offer an iPhone web app that takes full advantage of the iPhone's version of WebKit (so CSS animations, being able to rely on good javascript support etc). However, I'd also like the site to work well on other smart phones as well as more basic mobile phones as well.
Do I create two sites (Mobile WebKit and basic mobile web) and redirect based on User Agent? Can I create one site that degrades well? What are the possibilities, and how do other people handle it?
Also: are mobile web simulators worth a damn? I have an iPhone, so can test easily on that. If I want to test on Blackberry/Palm Pre do I really need a device or are there reliable simulators?
These are some of the iPhone specific libraries that provide a native look and feel on webkit:
iUi
jQTouch
Sencha Touch
iWebkit
Getting it to work on most phones will definitely be an issue with most libraries as they are built around with the iPhone's screen size (320x480) in mind.
To get a wider coverage of devices including Android and J2ME phones, checkout Yahoo Blueprint. It's a markup language that translates for various platforms and devices.
You could either get the mobile view based on User Agent by dynamically switching the stylesheet on your server when spitting the page. This is not a recommended approach though for heavy-duty pages as you will still be sending huge chunks of data that would not be rendered. Alternatively, if you have a clear separation of your views, you can templatize the view based on User Agent and/or other parameters. This has the advantage of keeping your controller logic in one place with only changing views. You could use the above libraries for iPhone/iPod Touch and switch to a simpler mobile version for other smartphones or tweak it as you want.
Creating a separate mobile version of the site can be painstakingly difficult to maintain when changes arise.
The iPhone and Android simulators are as close as it gets to the real deal. The iPhone won't let you do stuff like make calls on the simulator for obvious reasons, but the Android provides mock implementations for basically everything on the device.