I have some temperature and flow rate readings being sent over to firebase from an ESP8266. In my existing website I can view those readings but I was wondering if I could make a PWA and then create a widget on my home screen (Android device) with those readings.
Is this currently feasible with a PWA or will I have to go native?
Unfortunately you cannot create Android Widgets using a PWA today, you'll have to go with pure a Android implementation today. It's something we (the Chrome team) have considered, but haven't started working on.
One idea is to convert PWA to TWA (Trusted Web Activity), which has support for homescreen widgets.
reference: https://firt.dev/pwa-playstore#advantages-over-standard-pwa-installation
Related
I have a question about the mbasic.facebook.com page and how they manage to do what they do on iPhone with iOS 12.3.1. This is not about the facebook app. I don't have it installed at all.
I went to mbasic.facebook.com in mobile safari on iOS and created a shortcut for it on my homescreen. When I use the shortcut, the page behaves like what Apple calls a web application, i.e. it does not have the usual mobile safari UI.
Here's the weird part:
After using the shortcut and logging in, I switch to the settings app and under "Safari", I delete the browser history and website data.
I then use the shortcut again to launch the mbasic facebook site.
I am greeted with a screen where I still appear to be logged in. If i interact with the page it will make me login again, however.
This makes me wonder about two things:
How does the web application maintain its state (i.e. still know who am i) despite me trying to delete the Safari data?
How do I delete the data in a way that also affects a "web app" launched via a home screen shortcut?
I am not sure exactly. But I think it was done by PWA(Progressive Web App) technology. It helps you to use a website as an app that are installed from app store. And it also has the ability of state maintaining, giving push notification, maintain own storage in your device. When you installed it, all your login information was saved in your device as its own storage and this storage has no relation with your web browser. That;s why when you delete data from Safari, it made no effects on the installed one. And when you installed it, it installed its own manifest file in your device. That's why it runs on your device with it's own UI not with the safari UI. You can delete its data by deleting its storage folder that is created at the time of installation. I am not sure where you got the file in your device. Make a research on it. Here are some useful link about PWA. MDN web docs - PWA 4 important points to know about Progressive Web Apps (PWA) PWA Tutorial Hope it will help you. You are requested to share any new thing that should be known as I am new in this technology.
I am new in PWA application development. I would like to develop PWA application using Angular 6. Any one please suggest for following questions
1) How can we create PWA application for Android using Angular 6 ?
2) How can i install PWA application android phone (Local Testing) ?
3) What are features will not work in PWA application in Android and IOS comparing to native?
Please suggest !!! Great ! Thanks In Advance
PWA is nothing but a responsive website with a manifest and a service worker, manifest provides the functionality such as an icon, app name, add to home screen options, while service worker provides you a lot of functionality like network calls, notifications etc.
Here are some reference links which you can visit:
https://blog.angulartraining.com/progressive-web-apps-for-angular-6-and-beyond-f7e4b9a2f9fa
https://medium.com/#joseant.ruizsantiago/building-a-pwa-with-angular-6-5735d7308d25
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/web-app-manifest/
https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/
https://serviceworke.rs/
https://medium.com/dev-channel/why-progressive-web-apps-vs-native-is-the-wrong-question-to-ask-fb8555addcbb
http://www.learncodeonline.in/blog/list-of-top-advantages-disadvantages-of-progressive-web-apps/
Regarding your question about features of PWA vs Native, please see the answer posted here on stack overflow itself.
I recommend to use pwabuilder https://www.pwabuilder.com/
a project founded by microsoft, community guided.
It does a awesome job for android PWA/TWA
other alternative is bubblewrap
Understandably, PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) are added to home screen after the user visits the web app in a supported browser and clicks on "Add to Home Screen". This works fine for publicly available PWAs.
Thinking of Enterprise Android applications, which needs to be installed to thousands of devices via some app push tools like Airwatch, its practically not possible to have someone open the browser, put the URL and then add to home screen in all thousands of devices.
Is there any other way to automate this deploy/add icon to home screen of a Progressive Web App, not needing the user to visit the web app in a browser, and clicking on "Add to Home Screen" ?
One option we thought about is wrapping in Cordova, but we're trying to find a solution without such wrapper.
Chrome for Android generates and signs .apk file on the fly using WebPack, when the user clicks on "Add to Home screen" (from menu or install banner) option and if the site has a valid manifest.json and service worker.
Extracting and distributing APK: This .apk can be located and exported to desktop using file explorer tools. For some reason, some of default file explorer tools couldn't locate this .apk file. Once exported, this .apk can be used to distribute in controlled environment..like in enterprise devices, where you can enforce the deceive to have Chrome Browser. If this .apk is installed to devices which don't have Chrome browser, user will get a message saying "Chrome" is required to open this app. Once installed, installed PWA apk can be used.
For distributing PWA apps through Play store, google is streamlining the process. A google engineers repose on building APKs (March-2018), when we reached out to them for our enterprise needs.
"Well done extracting the APK and deploying it, it should give a good experience to end users, but I agree it shouldn't be that complicated to deploy web apps on Android.
We are currently working on a streamlined web apps feature, with which you wouldn't need to manipulate or build APKs. This feature will be available on managed devices using Play to deliver apps"
Alternate options: If you think your user base may not have Chrome or don't want to rely on that dependency, wrapping with Cordova kind of hybrid solution is the only way to build your PWA apps for distribution in app stores. With this option, if the "webpack" in the device has the version 40+, user will get PWA benefits. Otherwise, it will still work as a regular hosted web app.
Update on TWA - Trusted web activity is the official way to pack PWA for Android and its available in Chrome 72 and it also supports private/enterprise web apps as the digital assets validation happens in browser now(it use to happen in cloud, making this solution not possible for private web apps).
You can upload the PWA to Playstore using tools like PWA2APK. Just need to share the play store URL to the users, from which they can download PWA app like normal Android App.
Trusted Web activities are a new way to integrate your web-app content such as your PWA with your Android app using a similar protocol to Chrome Custom Tabs.
Trusted Web activities
I am in big dilemma for last few days while studying paypal API for creating an HTML5 based hybrid app that needs to use paypal api for carrying out some transactions.
What I need is I want to use some Paypal API in HTML5 based mobile app, that will finally get bundled into some native app, say for example .apk files.
The problem is :
I have not found a single link that explains that if the paypal provides any api for hybrid app.
I have read their new buttons, name value api, etc. Will any of these will work in my current application when they get deployed as an .apk for android? The thing that makes me worry is that paypal needs redirectURL, so what it will do incase of single page app?
Any links or references are welcome!
I would highly suggest you try Cordova for your App. It does HTML5 in an app format and works very well.
I don't know that you would want to make API calls but your HTML buttons would definitely work. Paypal also has a plugin that would work as well (Cordova is also called Phonegap).
PhoneGap/Cordova will be my recommendation for any hybrid mobile apps.
PayPal has an official plugin for PhoneGap with Android SDK.
Refer https://github.com/paypal/PayPal-Android-SDK-PhoneGap
I have a nokia E63 and I want to develop a very simple application available in the main menu (desktop? home? dashboard? main-menu? can't find a consistent name for this...) that simply allows users to change between 5 modes of my application.
How to develop this particular kind of "widget" using c++/qt (or java)?
Assuming your app is a Qt app. way to go would be, use Wrt homescreen widget and combine it with your Qt app as explained here .