Random Code Solutions

Since the demise of AdWhirl and my previous post about how to set up ads with Cordova, I've had to revisit it and get it working with AdMob which now uses Google Play Services.  Again there are very few instructions around for this, though I did find this useful looking Cordova plugin  which seems to offer a neat solution which is likely easier than the solution I'm about to propose and is cross-platform where I am only working with Android.  However, for various reasons, I don't want to use the Cordova tools, I want to do it manually.  If you're like me then here is how to do it This How-To uses a mash of the Cordova official documentation  on WebViews, my previous post on AdWhirl and the Admob Quick Start guide .  The premise here is that, since Cordova can be made to display in an Android WebView, and AdMob also uses WebViews, we can combine the two and display one in front of the other I'll assume you have an AdMob account and know how to create an...

I recently bought a Kindle Fire because they are great value for an Android tablet and I knew they were ways of installing Google Play so I could access the apps I had already purchased through Google Play without having to repurchase them from Amazon. Specifically I wanted Minecraft for my son to play - honestly, for my son ;-) The Fire I bought was the 5th Gen Kindle Fire (not HD, I wanted inexpensive!) and the awesome instructions on How To Geek  worked perfectly at installing Google Play. I highly recommend this solution for installing it, it was simple to follow and easy to do. From here I was able to log in to Google Play and download my apps including Minecraft which I had previously paid for on another device If all you want from this is to install apps from Google Play using your account, you are all set! However, if, like me, you also want to add a second Google user (in my case, my son) so he can use his account to synchronise his games, I got a bit stuck.  Unli...

I have recently been trying to add a plugin to an existing Cordova app (using Cordova 3.7.0).  Since I didn't create my app using the CLI I had 2 options: Create a new app using the CLI and copy my source files over Add the plugin files to my existing app For some reason I don't really like the idea of the CLI and wanted to do do this manually into an existing Android app, using Cordova, rather than use the CLI.  Don't ask me why, I just like doing things manually so I know what's going on under-the-hood I guess If you are like me and want to add a plugin manually, this is how to do it.  These instructions, though written for Android, will work for any any supported platform.  I will call out any differences between platforms that I know of Get the plugin source files You need the source code files for your platform (so .java for Android, .m .h for iPhone etc) as well as the plugin javascript files.  You might be able to get the source files from ...

I hadn't upgraded Cordova for ages and was still on version 2.4.0 (now at 3.7.0 at the time of writing). so I was surprised, but mostly dismayed, that I now had to use the Cordova tools to create apps.  Maybe it is just me but I liked being able to copy the jar, javascript file and config into an Android app myself.  I did have a go at using the tool, but the npm still didn't create the jar I wanted and I'd be forever tied into using the tool.  So I spent some time working out how to upgrade manually, and this is how to do it.   This obviously relies on you having java and android installed, which I'd guess you have if you're upgrading an Android app Step 1 Download the latest zip file from  http://cordova.apache.org/  and unzip it. Step 2  Install android if necessary and add it to the OS path.  You need ANDROID_HOME set or the android executable on the path.  I added both. Make sure you have Android version 19 installed from Andr...

Mobilize.js versus responsive web design (RWD) Both mobilize.js and responsive web design offer solutions to having a mobile and desktop site from the same codebase.  This is a comparison and evaluation of the 2 approches mobilize.js rendering I previously blogged about mobilize.js and how it can be used to transform a website dynamically between a desktop and mobile-enabled site.  As a brief background, mobilize.js is a javascript library that detects if a mobile browser is being used and, using client-side javascript, and re-renders the page using predefined mobile-optimised css.  However mobilize.js is no longer being developed - the developers now recommend using responsive web design instead.  In one of the comments to my original post I said I would check out the relative merits and report back - this is me reporting back Responsive web design works by detecting the size of the display and rendering differently using css (css3) media queries. ...

How to launch a website as a mobile app using PhoneGap/Apache Cordova I spent some time recently trying to find out how to launch my website as a mobile app.  The information was available around the internet but since it took me a while, I thought I'd collate it here in one simple post for anyone who wants to do the same I decided to use Apache Cordova since it gave me the framework for developing an HTML5 site as a mobile app already, meaning all I really needed to do was plug my website into it.  Their getting started guide has good information on how to create a Cordova project - I used Android but you can use whatever means you wish A basic Cordova app gives you a way to launch the app with an HTML page that you use to display your app contents.  The trick then is make the page load your website which you can do in one of 3 ways: 1. Package your site inside the app. This means it loads fast and without an internet connection.  The downside i...

How to create an Android Daydream with processing.js I've spent some time working out how to get processing.js (a nice javascript graphics library ported from Processing ) to display an Android Daydream (basically a screensaver that activates when the device is docked or charging) I previously wrote about how to display an HTML page as a Daydream which forms the basis for this post.  Please see my earlier post for full details but to summarise you can load an HTML page in a webview like this webView.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/www/index.html"); Processing.js allows you to display Processing code as javascript in a page, so all you need to do is either embed the processing.js code or load the Processing PDE file containing the code as explained on the processing.js site I only had a couple of issues with it which were: 1. The js code seemed to run at a much  higher frame rate than my native Processing code such that my animation looked insane . In the end I...