If you are interested in having a native Android App for your personal blog, there are some technical details that you ought to be aware of. I built an app for WordPress, however the procedure is comparable to those of other platforms, as long as they provide content for RSS feeds.
First you need to become knowledgeable of jQuery and jQueryMobile. There are lots of online guides for beginners or you can obtain one of the outstanding books to get started quickly.
The app is basically an HTML document with each section representing the different screens of the application. The page changes, AJAXeffects – note that notification about page loading when you transition between pages – and the layouts of the screen are automatically handled by the jQueryMobile library.
The app captures data from the WordPress blog by way of regular RSS feeds. These WordPress feed requests are sent through Google Feeds API to sidestep the restrictions of security as it concerns cross-domain scripting. If you want to show image thumbnails beside the titles, ensure that you include the Media RSS component to the feed of WordPress.
Located in a local Dropbox, my working folder becomes really useful when testing the different screens. Dropbox has the associated JavaScript files, image icons and HTML code. Dropbox provides a public web link of the HTML file which can be used to test the HTML document on any mobile or desktop device. If the local HTML file is changed, the changes will be automatically synced by Dropbox. To make your app operate in an offline environment, localStorage can be used and all current browsers support it. This is precisely what I make use of for the “Reading List” element of the app – when the Save button is hit localStorage, which is accessible offline, saves the story.
jQueryMobilelibrary includes the “slide” transition but this launches flicker so it is advisable to disable it. I also had difficulty seeing YouTube videos with the mobile app that utilized standard <embed src*> tags but this was remedied once the video embedded code was rewritten to a compatible code for IFRAME.
Once the basic HTML page for the Android application has been prepared, you will be required to transform that page into a native app (or the .apk file). This part is actually the easiest.
PhoneGap is a tool that uses a few simple steps to package your JavaScript code, CSS and HTML into a native App for Android using a few simple steps. The site for Android developers provides a collection of handy icons (in Photoshop format) that can be modified and incorporated with your own app.
Click Here to get started and build your apps now.
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