I am building a program at the high school where I teach that will allow us to teach some Web Development courses. One of those courses is an HTML5 App Development course. I would like the students to be able to develop apps using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript and then load that app on their personal device and maybe share that app with friends. The apps would not be distributed through the respective app stores, this is only so they can see the fruits of their labors on their own devices and share them with friends. This would also work well for marketing this course to get more enrollment in future semesters.
Ideally I would like to use a single platform for developing these apps, regardless of the device type. For example I thought I could use PhoneGap, but recently found that Apple pulled the mobile app from their store so you have to fork and pull from github and then build the app and side load it through the QR code. However, even with this method Apple still requires any app made for iOS to be made with a signing certificate, which can only be created by using a Mac.
I don't have a Mac, I don't have a Mac lab in my classroom, is there any way to develop apps that can be installed on an iOS device without having to have a Mac to get certificates? Is there no education option that allows iOS apps to be created without going through these hoops that either require a Mac or require you use Apple software like XCode?
Am I out of luck for my students with iPhones?
Thanks
You can compile and generate your .ipa file using ReactNative and Ionic framework, that allows you to built on there server.
But main problem arises while creating .p12 signing certification file and Uploading the .ipa file on app store or only on testflight from education purpose.
For that you need mac operating system which contain Application loader to submit your app to Apple App Store Connect.
So you have you can buy second hand mac-mini for that. Or there are some site which help you to upload your .ipa file http://www.connectuploader.com or virtually provide you mac http://www.macincloud.com.
I've been researching if it's possible to integrate Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 in a buildscript for Jenkins. The main goal is if there is a release in a specified branch in the given VCS, that it'll publish them to their responsible store. At the moment I've a way to publish Android and iOS, but it seems that there is nothing for Windows Phone 8.
The question is:
Is there a command-line based application that is able to publish Windows Phone 8 apps to the Windows Store?
If there is a way to integrate with a API or simply by doing some POST/GET requests, I would like to know as well. At the moment I'm researching that part.
The part of building and signing the APK's, APPX's and IPA's is already taken care off.
For iOS I'm able to use FastLane(Deliver) or
Nomadcli(Shenzhen);
For Android I'm able to use a Jenkins plugin(Google Play Publisher) or integrating with the API (there are various command-line based applications out there);
I would really appriciate if you can leave a answer! Thanks in advance!
There is no API for the Windows Store available (yet) that would allow you to do this.
I've HTML application build with AngularJS/jQuery/Bootstrap with AJAX REST API.
Is it possible to create executable/installer for Windows operating system?
Without any 3rd-party software, it should look like native application, but HTML.
For example, Slack messenger has web/mac/windows versions and they look same.
Any ideas?
// UPD
I probably need a wrapper (webview), but I need all features for EcmaScript5/CSS3.
Electron is the easiest way:
1. Install electron
2. Create and edit main.js:
const electron = require('electron');
const { app, BrowserWindow } = electron;
let mainWindow;
app.on('ready', () => {
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
width: 1000,
height: 700
});
mainWindow.setTitle('title of the desktop app');
mainWindow.loadURL('http://www.yourwebpage.com');
mainWindow.on('closed', () => {
mainWindow = null;
});
});
3. Execute desktop app:
electron main.js
And to build the app, use a builder such as electron-builder.
Hope that helps you!
(Full disclosure, I'm the founder of ToDesktop, I'll try to be objective and unbiased here.)
As usual in Computer Science, the answer is "it depends"!
The first question that you should ask yourself is: Who is the desktop app being used by? Just you? Or, are you distributing the app to customers? Because these two segments have very different needs.
Just you
There are a lot of options here (in no particular order):
Nativefier — The obvious option. Lots of configuration options, lots of contributors, open source and regularly updated. This should probably be the default option if you want to whip up an app just for yourself.
WebDGap — This is a lovely project but it is a little old and "as of April 13th, 2018 WebDGap is no longer an active project.". It should also be noted that this is built on an old version of node-webkit and not Electron.
Web2Desk — Great option if you don't want to mess around with the command-line. It uses Nativefier under-the-hood. It is free with a splash screen or $19 with the splash screen removed.
Do-it-yourself with Electron — The basics were covered quite well in this earlier answer. I like this option because it gives you complete flexibility to take the project wherever you like and you'll learn a bit of Electron too.
Fluid App — This is Mac only but otherwise it's a lovely solution and super easy. It's free for the standard version, there is also a $5 version which includes features like fullscreen.
Flotato — Mac only again but this is a really interesting approach. Simply clone the app and give it a name like docs.google.com, it will then turn into Google Docs. At the time of writing this, it's in pre-release (not released yet) but I'll be watching this closely, it's very cool.
ToDesktop — ToDesktop will work but it's probably a bit overkill if you're creating a personal app. Also, it's probably a bit too expensive for this use-case. ToDesktop is targeted at creating a desktop app for distribution to customers (more about that below).
Distributing to customers
There are a few extra considerations which become more important when creating a desktop app for distribution to your customers:
Installer — Mac users expect a "drag to applications" DMG file. Windows users expect an installer and they also expect to be able to uninstall it from the control panel.
Code Signing — If your app isn't code signed then by default Windows Authenticode and Apple Gatekeeper will prevent your desktop app from being opened.
Auto-update — There is still a web browser running "underneath" your desktop app, it's important to keep this updated for two reasons. 1. Security issues + vulnerabilities should be patched over time. 2. You don't want to be stuck supporting an old web browser in 5 years time because your desktop app's browser hasn't been updated
The tools mentioned above don't offer these features, so they're not really suitable for the use-case of distributing your app to customers. These are the features that we wanted to add when building ToDesktop, so I think it fits this use-case quite nicely. We're adding features all the time, last week we added support for App Protocols and Deeplinks.
I myself was looking for an all around solution for awhile. I tried everything from TideSDK, AppJS, Appcelerator Titanium, native code in VB.NET, XCode, Python, C++, Electron, node-webkit, etc: Basically you name it I've tried it.
Note Electron is nice, but it only runs on 64bit processors. So node-webkit is good if you want to run your app on 32bit processors.
So I decided to build my own open source solution called WebDGap.
Currently WebDGap runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Google Chrome and as a web application!
Watch the How To Video to learn, well how to use the app obviously.
Here's a screenshot.
Being that you're a Mac user already you can merge your exported app into 1 .app mac file. This can be done with Automator (and a little shell scripting).
There's also a coding playground I made for mobile users that has this feature built in called kodeWeave.
Here's a Tic-Tac-Toe game I'm going to export as a Mac App:
Now the web app is running as a native Mac application!
The most easiest and quickest way i know is to use nodejs/npm’s nativefier library which underlying electronjs . It will just take 5 min to create executable for windows. Even a person who do not have programming experience can create desktop application from web application. Below mentioned post has described the steps to convert web application to desktop application. Must read !
Convert any web application to desktop application in 2 min using npm’s nativefier
There are a ton of frameworks out there that can wrap your web app into a native application that can access things like the file storage API for an operating system. This is the specific guide for Windows.
BEWARE THOUGH - you will need to spend time doing solid testing and QA work for your native app so it doesn't feel like a website inside a native wrapper, as well as integrates well with all versions of the OS you want to be compatible with. Tweetdeck for Mac is an example of what not to do - basically a web browser in a native wrapper).
Use Web2Desk: If you are looking for Free and Simple solution.
wherein all you need to do is enter the URL of the web app (or website) and Desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux is generated in no time.
With a bit of wrapper code you could package it as a Chrome App. They do not need to run in a browser window but have all the capabilities of a web app, standalone.
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps
Best Way to Convert Web to Exe is using nativefier:
nativefier --name "Inventory Management System" "http://localhost/php_stock_zip/php_stock_zip/php_stock/" -i ./icon.png -p windows
Steps:
Press Win+x
Press C
Type
nativefier
Installation Requirements
* macOS 10.9+ / Windows / Linux
* Node.js >=6 (4.x may work but is no longer tested, please upgrade)
See optional dependencies for more
Step 5: npm install nativefier -g
Finally type nativefier "Web Link"
I was thinking of writing a simple android app that would just contain my notes I've made for my job for my own personal reference. I figuered perhaps some of my co-workers would want to use this app too, but most of them use IPhones. I don't own any Apple products and I know nothing about developing for iOS. After some research I've decided perhaps the best approach is to develope the 'app' as a website instead, to be viewed offline. Does this approach make sense, and could I distribute such a product on an Apple device without any issues?
I'd recommend developing an offline application with PhoneGap. PhoneGap allows you to build your app once with web--standards, wrap it with PhoneGap, and then deploy it to multiple mobile platforms.
I am contemplating buying an iPad and am wondering what options I will have for developing an app for personal use ... specifically whether I will be able to do it as an offline browser app. The app currently exists as an Android Java app; it interacts with a large local database (about 3MB) and displays images and text drawn from a very large pool of resources stored locally (about 2GB).
My immediate questions are:
How would I get the files (html/javascript, database, images and text) transferred into the iPad's storage from a Windows PC? With Android this is a simple matter of hooking up via USB and using Windows Explorer. Googling suggests that for an iPad I might have to use an app on Windows called DiskAid, but this costs $25 which seems a bit steep for my simple purpose. Are there free alternatives?
Once the files are installed on the iPad how would I run the html app? On Android this appears to be a matter of keying "file:///sdcard/MyBrowserAppFolder/mybrowserapp.htm" into the browser's address box. Does th iPad browser work in a similar way.
There are two basic kinds of applications that run on iOS.
Mobile designed web applications that are hosted on a server and accessed through Safari or another browser.
Native applications built using Xcode and usually objective-c.
For the latter, you could use the phonegap framework to build an app using existing html and javascript.
My personal advice is to invest the time to learning how to code this up using objective-c. Depending on what format your db is in, importing the structure and data might be trivial. It will take an investment of time, but doing things using the native tools is the best choice for iOS development in my opinion. I was in the same situation (PHP, VB.NET and Javascript developer) and just decided to take the time and learn to do it right. This was a great decision and the development time of a simple to moderate application takes very little time now.
Safari on iOS does not support the URL's of type file:// natively. So you either write your own app, purchase an app or use something like a local web server after jailbreaking.
Alternatively, and if you can verify that the app you have mentioned does what you want to do, then maybe $25 is not so much of a price. Depends on what your time is worth :)
However there are cheaper apps around that allow to transfer and read html via wifi and usb. (Not sure I can name them here)
The USB transfer aka iTunes Filesharing is a standard function that a developer can enable in the info.plist of their app. Many apps use this to transfer data between Computer and iDevice.