Category: Android

Due to changes in Android OS, this post is deprecated starting with AppStudio 6.

Splash screen support for Android Home screen apps was added in Chrome 47, released in December 2015. It gives your web apps a look much more like a native app at startup.

There are a few new items in Project Properties for this. They are grouped together under the ‘WebApp Chrome’ heading.
Continue reading “Android Web Apps: SplashScreens and Icons”

Chrome 28 and higher now supports setting the orientation in your app. Simply do the following:

 screen.orientation.lock("landscape")
 screen.orientation.lock("portrait")

The screen will then shift to the orientation you specify and ignore the actual orientation of the device.

This only works on Chrome. If you try to execute this code on an iPhone, it will get an error and the orientation will not be affected. To improve the code above so it runs without errors, do the following:

If screen.orientation <> undefined Then
  screen.orientation.lock("landscape")
End If

The screen orientation still won’t change on an iPhone, but at least there won’t be an error!

Google recently added a little trick to Chrome, allowing apps to become full screen. It works on both the Desktop and Android devices. You’ll need to be running Chrome Version 32 or newer.

To use it, add a button to your app with the following code:

Function btnChrome_onclick()
  document.documentElement.webkitRequestFullScreen()
End Function

After going to full screen, a message is displayed telling how to go back: swipe down on an Android device or hit escape on the desktop. As of Chrome 32, this is no longer needed.

Here’s how it looks on an Android device.

If you want to execute some code after the resize (perhaps to move controls to take advantage of the larger screen, do the following:

Function window_onresize()
  Print "resize"
  '… do any housekeeping
End Function

If you want hide the button if you are not using Chrome, add this code to your global code:

  If Not window.chrome Then btnChrome.hide()

A few gotchas:

• This won’t work with the Android Browser or iOS.
• This won’t work with PhoneGap, as long as it still uses the Android Browser.
• It seems to have to be done from a button: just putting it in Global Code does not work.

Let us know if you find out anything more about this trick!

There has been some confusion in the Android world lately due to the two different browsers on Android devices. Some devices run one, some the other and some run both. Here’s a rundown on what we know about them and how they differ.
Continue reading “Android Browser and Chrome”