Android has a pretty capable web browser from what I have seen (sans Flash). It can run several of my GWT apps, for example, and JavaScript/XHR are usually what many other mobile browsers cannot handle. Also, I believe that yes, the WebView does allow you to bind from the running application process into the web process, via JavaScript (this I also haven't used, so I cannot speak to how well it works, but just having it is pretty darn powerful: http://code.google.com/android/reference/android/webkit/WebView.html#addJavascriptInterface(java.lang.Object,%20java.lang.String)).
Now all that said, I would think you would have to heavily customize any existing web app, or write an entirely new one, to work with the Android concepts - IF you want to pass the GPS location directly and so on. If you have to go to that extent anyway, in my opinion, it would be better just to write a native Android app rather than try to write a specialized web app with a few buttons above a web view for Android (again, because this web app would not be useful outside of Android, where the WebView passing stuff really would be powerful in my mind is in allowing you to leverage existing apps, or write apps that are new but you want to use them in multiple contexts, Android or otherwise). As for ASP.NET and such, sorry, but isn't that a server side technology anyway? I don't use ASP.NET, but it doesn't seem to have any bearing here. If Android supported it, that would be for running a server on Android (because it does of course support it from the standpoint of a client, Android supports HTTP really well)? A native Android app should be able to talk to just about any HTTP/REST or HTTP/ SOAP backend, or many other HTTP related approaches, regardless of the server side technology. If you need to talk to the server side a lot, and send your location, and send binary files, etc, you want a native Android app that uses HTTP to talk to said server. You should build a nice server side API first (REST would be my recommendation there in Android client terms, for many reasons, but that's another discussion), and then communicate with it. Doesn't seem like for your use case there is any need to shoe horn anything into a web app? On Nov 21, 4:45 am, "Brad Gies" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm in the design process of a new app, and I'm mulling over the > possibilities for the user interface. My app will need to communicate with > my web server (or a web service) for almost every interaction it has. The > app will need to occasionally send GPS information to the server, and on > rare occasions it will need to take a picture and send it to the server. Of > course, it always needs to respond to the actions of the user, and it will > need to use the information passed back from the web server (or web service) > and display the results to the user. > > So the question on my mind is how much can I rely on the web view for > interacting with the user? If Android supported ASP.NET or something > similar, then it would be possible to use the browser for almost anything I > need, and that would be very handy because it would mean that I could easily > make changes, and add new functionality by simply updating the web pages. > However from what I've seen and read so far, it seems the capabilities of > the Web View are quite limited for client side processing. > > My main question is this: Is there a way to use any of the Android system > functions from a web page? If I could have an android app that has a couple > of buttons on the top and say, Location permissions, and then uses the rest > of the screen for a web browser, and the web page would be able to access > the GPS information somehow, it would be very powerful. > > Can anyone comment on this or direct me to some good information that I can > read for myself. > > Has anyone else attempted to use Web pages as the main user interface for > their apps? It would be handy to see what others have done if there are some > apps already out there. > > Sincerely, > > Brad Gies > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > Brad Gies > > 27415 Greenfield Rd, # 2, > > Southfield, MI, USA > > 48076 > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > Moderation in everything, including abstinence --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
