Wrapping HTML in an app for Android

Question

I have an existing site (social in nature) and it already has a mobile web version too, so what I basically want to do is wrap that view in an Android app and maybe add a nice splash screen to it. So essentially a "branded" browser window.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You would need two activites

• Splash Screen (use a timer and after x seconds move to the next activity)
• Main

In the main activity you would need to set a layout with a webView in your layout so something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<WebView  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/webview"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
/>

and the code:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    mWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
    mWebView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
    mWebView.loadUrl("http://www.google.com");
}

and the permissions:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

in the manifest file.

If you want to turn the title bar off you will also need to add:

<activity android:name=".Main" android:label="@string/app_name"
 android:theme="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar">

Read the docs for more help! An example for Google for this exactly and I referenced is http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/views/hello-webview.html

Answer 2

There also exist several frameworks that wrap HTML5 inside a native app and gives you access to APIs.

Phonegap is the most well-known http://phonegap.com/