I have only written PC programs using C#, .NET, and WinForms, and am new to app development.
I have written a program that uses HTML files (as a type of "form"), that will then be passed to an app, which can then be used to read/record data. I.e.
On the PC, a user creates a HTML "form"
This is loaded onto a mobile device (phone or tablet)
The user can then open the app, and access each individual (or individual copies) a HTML form to read/record data.
This is then transferred back to the PC, and stored.
Now, I'm not too concerned with the transfer between the PC/device, or the storage of the data, or any of that at this point. What I am concerned about is the ability to open/view these HTML files within a single app.
As the program has already been written using .NET and WinForms, it needs to be converted to be used on a mobile device, and I have chosen Xamarin for this purpose. However I only have limited knowledge of this package, so I am not sure if I can achieve this within a single app (i.e. without having to pass it to a separate app to view the HTML files).
So: is there an environment in Xamarin that I can use to view HTML files within my app?
Xamarin.Forms has a WebView class that you can use to display HTML content, so viewing the content is rarely an issue.
Interacting with the HTML content can sometimes be a bit tricky because of the links not conforming to what the app expects. But you can often solve these issues using the WebView.Navigating event handler that will allow you to catch and change the navigation behavior.
Xamarin.Forms's WebView relies on the native UIWebView (iOS) and WebView (Android) and Xamarin.Forms allows you to override the native Renderers. Overriding the native renderer will give you access to the native WebView with full flexibility.
You also have the possibility to completely ignore Xamarin.Forms's WebView and write your own view using native views.
It would probably be smart to test your WinForms app on iOS using Safari and on Android using Chrome as they are using the same rendering engines that will be used in respectively UIWebView (iOS) and WebView (Android)
Related
Say I build a super mobile friendly web application that I want in the Play Store for Android users to be able to download.
Could I use Xamarin to:
Wrap the entire mobile app as a single WebView
Register for mobile push notifications
Essentially shortlining an MVP of an android app by using an existing web app? If so, is there any well-known process or documentation that demonstrates this?
Probably the best approach for you would be using Xamarin Forms with one or more pages containing only web views.
I don't love Xamarin Forms because usually for me Xamarin Android+iOS gives a better result in similar time, but your app would be so simple that doesn't make sense to do it with Xamarin Android.
Make sure that your web app will show only what makes sense to be shown in your app, otherwise you risk to see double header/footer, useless buttons... but if the website is yours adding a few parameters to change a bit the UI won't be a problem I guess.
Have a look at this example:
https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-forms-samples/tree/master/WorkingWithWebview
Another approach is the use of Razor to build your pages in html directly inside your app, but if I understood well it's not what you need:
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/advanced/razor_html_templates/
Although it is technically possible to do this as the previous answer has suggested. I would recommended firstly reviewing, the relevant stores guidelines on submissions. Apple for example will not allow a submission to their store of any application that simply mirrors the functionality of a website. I suspect Google's would likely be the same.
However that said, to answer your question, Xamarin.Forms would be appropriate for a simple application like the one you are suggesting. Or if you prefer to build to a specific OS, then in iOS with Xamarin you would use the Safari View Controller that was added in it's xcode 8.1 release. Android uses something similar as does windows.
EDIT:
You can use the Web View control in Xamarins Andorid native PCL project to encapsulate your mobile friendly website within an application here is the documentation:
Xamarin Android Developer link to Android Web View
As for push notifications, yes this is perfectly possible using Xamarin.Android. and varies on implementation depending on what you want to use as the back end to handle them, I.E. Azure's notification hub etc.
I want to develop an app for Windows surface tablet and iOS mobile and iPad.
As I am a new user to Xamarin, when I created my first project,it shows 3 projects:-
hello.driod, hello.ios and hello.winPhone.
I have 3 questions based on this:-
How will I be able to write the same code and share for windows 8.1 and iOS?
and whenever I drag and drop the elements to the UI page, will the same elements be copied to both windows and iOS simultaneously or I got to add them seperately?
Currently I dont have a MAC to connect to my PC. Can I write the code and and there while testing it, connect it to a MAC or should it be connected during the whole process?
Please Help!
Using the same code depends on how your structure your app.
You can go the native route where you can share the bulk of your logic by containing it in a shared / PCL project (more on that here), but have platform specific code for your UI.
For example, if you have a cross platform app targeting iOS and Android you would still create the UI in a storyboard for iOS and AXML files for Android. Any code you want to "connect" to your UI would be specific to that platform as you would use the platform APIs. Any code that is not platform specific (i.e., not calling iOS or Android APIs) can go in your shared / PCL project.
Or you can choose Xamarin.Forms which adds a layer of abstraction by allowing you to write the UI in XAML once and have it work on all platforms. The advantage is increased code sharing as now your UI is also shared. The downside is to utilise platform specific features you'll need to implement DependencyService or custom renderers. Read more about Xamarin.Forms here.
As above, it depends. If you are going the native route, then no. If you are going with Xamarin.Forms, then you are using the same XAML code for the UI across platforms, but there is no drag and drop designer.
To build an iOS app you need to be connected to a Mac. You will also need to be connected to a Mac to use the iOS Designer.
Apple's documentation suggests using WkWebView for new development, although it seems to have a typo where it recommends WKWebView over UIWebView in the mac developer library.
For new development, employ this class instead of the older UIWebView class.
The typo is probably because they are trying to unify the OSX and iOS interface to the web view by using the same header for both.
However, WKWebView doesn't have all the functionality that WebView has in OSX. For example, you can get access to DOM nodes in the native interface in WebView but I don't see any way of doing this from Swift/Objective-C in WKWebView.
For my purposes, it seems like WebView is what I need, but I'm weary of starting a project that relies on an API that will be removed. However, I don't see any mention of intent to deprecate WebView anywhere in the headers or the documentation.
What makes this even more confusing is the WebKit Framework Reference makes reference to both WK and older web view APIs without clarifying anything.
WKWebView
A WKWebView object displays interactive web content, such as for an in-app browser.
WebView
WebView is the core view class in the WebKit framework that manages interactions between the WebFrame and WebFrameView classes.
Is WebView going away in OSX?
Its not a false alarm. Apple moved Safari off of UIWebView/WebView in 6.0, so security fixes simply aren't happening in the old class as much. For that reason alone you should not use it for new stuff. Apple has been incrementally improving it with every OS release so much is now do-able with private extensions (file:// access, downloads, etc)
That being said, it won't be fully equivalent to old WebView. You can't directly access the DOM anymore because the Network/Rendering/UI processes were split up and you create locks by making element references like that. Use the postMessage() message handler and wkwebview.evaluateJavaScript() and callback-ish/promisy JS code between those two pillars to deal with web<>native interaction asynchronously.
Important
Starting in iOS 8.0 and OS X 10.10, use WKWebView to add web content to your app.
Do not use UIWebView or WebView.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebview
I'm building an app, and I was curious if there's a way to open the app when you're on the website through the iOS Safari extension. So, if I'm on a post I'd tap the app icon in the share sheet and I'd pass that to the app to load the post in the app.
I know the Bing app can translate the current website and inject directly into the DOM, so I was wondering what custom logic you can implement.
There's really no way to open the app from this kind of extension. Extensions can't access [UIApplication sharedApplication], so they can't call openURL:. There's an openURL:completionHandler: method on NSExtensionContext, but it only works in "today" extensions. Share extensions can display a fully custom UI and can save data that's available to their containing app, but they can't actually open that app.
I have set up Cordova/phonegap to work in Xcode and written a simple app in HTML and CSS and tested it on the Simulator and it works. It's just a single view app. I am trying to figure out how to turn that into a multiple view app, so that there are several views/screens that link to each other.
Do I need to write several HTML documents and link them together in XCode, or is it written in one HTML document using JavaScript?
With PhoneGap, think of it as operating a tiny web server on your device. So, you build it out like you would any other web site - with links to other pages that sit in that folder/directory or even on other servers - and it will allow that navigation. So, once you get it set up and deployed via Xcode, all you need to do is modify the html/css/js.