I have the following requirement and I couldn't figure out a way to achieve it.
I have a mobile friendly web application developed using ASP.NET MVC. It works fine as a normal web application. Now my client wants it to be more like a native application (like the Facebook app for mobile, where you can download and install it and still opens in a browser window when you run the executable file.More importantly, all the fixes and updates are reflected in the application without having to re-install it.)
Can someone guide me through this?
As you said he wants to run application like website in browser. it sounds like that he just wants some sort of Shortcut for website.
Then you just create an application and fire your event to run site URL in browser.
as you said
all the fixes and updates are reflected in the application without
having to re-install it.
means this is just a site.
in other case use Phone gap (http://phonegap.com/) it matches your requirements and uses HTML for styling and almost all features of an typical site.
PhoneGap Support to Different Mobile Plateform (Claimed by PhoneGap)
http://docs.phonegap.com/en/edge/guide_support_index.md.html#Platform%20Support
The Native application need to be developed in separate platforms. Like Android, IOS, Nokia, BlackBerry, Windows Phone etc., If the Application requires all the platform apps.
In our concern we have developed few apps same as your requirement. When user wants to view in PC they can view entire web with responsive design. Same will work, if customer access from mobile with in mobile view. Entire application will work accordingly for PC, TAB and MOBILE with responsive design.
If you go for Native then the platform apps need to be developed and inside app they will use to call your site url with in WebView. Like PC Browser calls URL.
So, when ever you made any changes the changes will be reflected in your app also. without reinstalling the app. Since webview is calling only your URL. For this internet is must.
You can make these kind of Apps with setups and designs through Online itself. Just give your URL with that.
Link Here : Apps Bar
Link Here : App Makr
Google It : Google
Related
I have an ASP.Net web application (web forms) with Telerik ajax controls.
It is currently mobile-friendly, but I would like to put it into an app that a user could download from the app stores.
Is there a quick and easy way to make this work using something like a
WebView or am I likely stuck writing a full native app? The
application​ is mostly data driven (lots of Telerik grids) and will
need an internet connection for most functions.
I guess you could create a native app that opens the web site inside a WebView. That's fairly simple. I've done as much in the Video player app I wrote for my book. However, that isn't in the spirit of mobile apps. The point of putting it in the app store is generally to give your users an app that works like they expect on their phone.
If it is data driven, then expose the data via REST APIs and consume those APIs in a mobile app. If you want offline sync (for resilience or performance), that's an additional consideration. If you want mobile specific functionality like push notifications or authentication via touch id, for example, then those would also need a native app.
Short version - the simple "project my web app into a native app" is easy. But it's unlikely to be satisfying to your users and won't allow you to extend your app with native features.
we are developing app in asp.net HTML5 css3 for Iphone and Ipad. Its database driven web app. I want to know what are the best pracices to access DB from Mobile client. What are the database security considerations? What are the security risks that I should consider whaile developing such app that will run on mobile.
Since you're developing in asp.net, which is a web framework, the same security considerations should be made as a normal web application.
As it's a web application, mobile or desktop isn't relevant.
Microsoft have a a great website covering Security Considerations for ASP.NET Web Applications, I would suggest you give this a good look over and implement these into any websites you build.
The only things you need to consider whilst building a mobile website is responsive design, and restrictions on the browser.
Responsive Design:
http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/beginners-guide-to-responsive-web-design
Browser Restrictions
For browser restrictions you will have to look around but for example up to iOS 5.x.x you couldn't upload using an input tag, and obviously in iOS you won't be able to download unsupported file types to the device.
Accessing from Client
As with any application where a client is accessing a database with other client data in it, input sanitation is a must.
E.g a link to change a document is like Document.aspx?ID=4
Don't assume that the user wouldn't change the ID in the URL just to see what happens, always do checks for everything the user attempts.
I have a c# windows application that can successfully record audio using user's desktop mic.
Now i want this facility to run from ASP.NET website. (Note: user would not have this application installed on his machine).
Is there a way that i can run this application from a web page and record and save sound file on user's desktop? I searched on google and found that it is achievable using ActiveX. But i am not sure how to do this.... :((
Any Clue...??
Thanks...
You are not going to be able to do this using standard HTML / web browser functionality.
You will need to use a richer, client-side platform like Silverlight or Flash. ActiveX could also support this, but it's a pretty dated technology. Better to go with Silverlight or Flash.
Is there a way to make a desktop application easily interfaceable via Web ? Meaning, can you have a way to interface with a single desktop application as if you were remote desktop'd into the machine but not? I am looking at doing this in ASP.NET or Silverlight.
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for...
If you were able to create your entire application UI in Silverlight and host it properly (in IIS or whatever) it would then be accessible from anywhere on the web. If you needed the perception of a real desktop app when running locally, you could then just make some simple app (WinForms, WPF, whatever) which contains a web browser control that could also load up the hosted Silverlight app (and just be a transparent browser). Depending on what the application is doing, you would obviously need some sort of service layer (probably in WCF) do to all of the heavy lifting and data access.
I guess the main question would be: can you accomplish everything your application needs to do in Silverlight? Since Silverlight is meant to run in a browser, it can be very limiting.
There are many solutions based on plugins. Some of the popular ones:
Citrix
Spoon
If you're ok with plugins, but only if they're common ones (flash, java), there are various solutions:
http://www.wizhelp.com/flashlight-vnc/
http://www.tightvnc.com/doc/java/README.txt (bundled java applet with TightVNC)
If you don't want plugins at all, there's an experimental HTML5/javascript VNC viewer:
http://guacamole.sourceforge.net/
I want to build a web application (SaaS) that can work both in Online and Offline modes. The user needs limited features in case he is offline and full feature access when he becomes online again. I thought of the following options:
Make the user download a local server such as Cassini and devise an architecture to allow online and offline modes in the web application. I am not sure how it will be done but I believe all the commands will be routed through this local server. The local server will then decide whether it accesses the local resources or the server.
Making a user install application on his system will defeat the whole idea behind SaaS.
Use Google Gears - I just checked how Google Docs work in offline mode. It installs Google Gears on the user's system which was pretty neat and fast and copies all the files locally. A link is provided to access the offline version. This seems like a good option to me as it integrates a local server, relational datastore and a worker pool in itself but is Google Gears mature enough to be used in production?
Has anyone worked/working on such an application. Ideas welcome.
EDIT #1:
I am not very familiar with Silverlight and whether it can be used in such a scenario.
EDIT #2: The following link mentions that SilverLight can be used to develop Offline applications Offline SilverLight
I am looking for expert comments from people who have used SilverLight in their development. Can user work offline? Can user re-open the same webpage after closing the browser window?
If you choose to let users install an app on their computer, I would consider developing a Windows Forms app instead of a web app, basically because this seem like a more logical solution. If you deploy the app using ClickOnce it is remarkably easy to keep the clients up to date.
From a user's point of view, I think that Gears is mature. I use in it Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs, pretty much without any problems. I don't know about the developer tools. It might help to use Google Clusure Library since it has methods specific for Google Gears.
Depending on the web browser that you need to support, you could also take a look at HTML 5. O'Reilly's online book Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript has a chapter about making a web app work in offline mode.
Seems to me that "web application" and "offline mode" are a bit contradictory.
I have seen some examples of Silverlight being used in such a way however. And, at one time, I implemented a WinForms smart client application that worked in such a way. These days, though, I would definately look into Silverlight.