Sebastien Blanc

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Recent posts by Sebastien Blanc

Hi all,
I would like to thank all the posters who has asked smart questions, provide nice additional information during this week. The book will be released soon (February) and I hope you will all be part of it. With Damon we have set up a Google Group to discuss about the book : http://groups.google.com/group/pro-android-web-apps , please join us, off course you can still ask questions on the JavaRanch (Which I also wants to thanks) forum.
13 years ago
Daniel,
That'a a very nice feature discovered !
But that's mean you create a close binding between your local device and the Web App, however let's stay pragmatic I will help in many situations.
13 years ago
Hi Andrew,
This is a great concept and I'm sure you will be able to make it a success !!

Well the good news is that it's doable with a Mobile Web App if you agreed to use a bridging framework like PhoneGap. Why ? Because you need the camera and that's all. And in the future is more than probable that the camera will be accessible directly from the browser.
As you mentioned, the core business logic will occurs on the server side and I think that it's the area where you will have to put the most effort. The another good news is that there are some excellent books ;-) that will help you to create the frontend application, adding the camera support is really just a matter of minutes onces you're confortable with the Mobile Web App development processes and have some basic JavaScript knowledge.

You could also easily add some Geolocation support, so when the picture of the shelf is taken it also automatically retrieves the shop based on its location.

The benefit of building a web based app will also be the fact to it will be easy to deploy on the different mobile platforms and provides automatically updates of your software.

You have a great idea , go for it !!!
13 years ago
Except SVG and Web Sockets, everything you mentioned is supported. SVG and Web Sockets will be able in the future, just hard o say when
13 years ago
Hi,
There is no official specs of what can/cannot be done compared to a the native SDK but you can have a pragmatic approach, for example if you are planning to build the next killer First Person Shooter for mobile you probably won't choose a Web Based App.
But if you tell me a bit more about your app, I will maybe be able to say if it's doable with a Web based approach.
13 years ago
Hi Andrew,
With offline caching you can cache every static resources you want :html,css,javascript, images. You persisted data can be stored using Web SQL or localStorage. So yes, it can acts as a native app, you can even add GPS support and device orientation detection. But if you need to access the camera or the accelerometer then you will need to package your web app into a native app, that can be done with PhoneGap for instance and is just a matter of some clicks.

13 years ago
Yes it's covered in details in chapter 3 & 4. In chapter 5 you will even see how you can synchronise local stored data with an online storage solution (once your connection is back ;-) )
13 years ago
Well, the most underused feature, and it counts for every type of devices (iPhone, blackberry) is ... the Web browser and particularly Mobile Web apps running on it ;-)
Native apps has been dominating the Mobile landscape for a while, but nowadays, with HTML5 and some nice JS and CSS , Mobile Web apps are really ready to take over the market and compete with native apps. No learning curve (for the web developers), update whenever you want, bypass any app acceptance process, provide the content you want ...
This is the core concept of this book but in in the same time it shows also how you package it into a native app if you really want to!
13 years ago
As far as I know I don't think it's possible but I will check with Damon maybe he has more info on this.
13 years ago
Yes there is entire chapter on PhoneGap, how to install, to get it run and off course getting benefit of the extra lib that are exposed through JS (camera, vribrate etc ...)
13 years ago
if you like Play! you should also check Grails, it's my favorite web framework and I contribute also for it by building plugins
13 years ago

Hendy Setyo Mulyo wrote:Hi,

I would like to ask some questions about Pro Android Web Apps book.
1. Does the book cover any JavaScript framework to build rich mobile UI?


Yes there is entire chapter on this topic


2. Does the book explain us why we should build web apps on Android instead of native apps?


Yes, in the introduction of this books the pros of mobile web apps are explained


3. Does the book cover any best practices to build web apps on Android?


All along the book you will find tips/best practices and you have also an Appendix on debugging and improving the quality of your code


Does this book also explains any Location Based Services API to build mobil


Yes from chapter 6 to the end of the book, LBS is major topic mainly covered.


13 years ago
Hi,
During the first 6 chapter, you will build a todo list app, from very basic to very elaborated at the end chapter 6, a lot of different concepts are artioulated around this sample app.
The rest of the book will be focused on building a geosocial Game , very cool !
13 years ago
Creating webservices is indeed of the topic of this book, but consuming webservices (REST based) directly from your javascript code is covered and explained.
13 years ago
Hi Andrew,
There is not really a preferred architecture, depends what are the needs, you could us a classic 3-tiers architecture or maybe a more "modern" cloud based architecture(google app engine, noSQL db etc..).
Regarding the offline aspect, well in chapter 6 there a whole section on how to leverage the power HTML5's offline caching feature which will make your web app also available when there is no connection.
13 years ago