So after too many searches I decided to ask this question.
First of all I'm building a mobile app using angularjs in my website (Online) not localhost. The app is a kind of a CRM based (CRUD mostly).
I have the cordova mobile application ready. I have a few questions here.
Is it acceptable, if I use the website URL directly in the inappbrowser URL (Like an iframe)?
Or. Should I need to put the angularjs files inside the www directory of the cordova app and access the server functions via API?
Which way is preferable? Why?
Will there be any performance differences?
If the No.1 is not a best practice, what is the major drawback on using the inappbrowser?
You can build Hosted Web App in an Apache Cordova:
For this scenario, you use a thin Cordova client (think of it as a web
browser embedded in a native app) that automatically redirects to your
Web site.
See also: Wrapping an existing web application in Cordova.
Other option: PWA.
From Wiki:
Progressive web applications (PWAs) are web applications that load
like regular web pages or websites but can offer the user
functionality such as working offline, push notifications, and device
hardware access traditionally available only to native applications.
PWAs combine the flexibility of the web with the experience of a
native application.
I am planning to use socket.io inside a hybrid mobile application packaged for a mobile device. Are there any limitations that I might encounter with browser adoption or anything of that sort? Will this sort of a set up work with all mobile devices when packaged and distributed?
Updated details
I am going to use it to write a chat application. If I do a basic chat application using socket.io and then package it using PhoneGap or Cordova/Ionic, would there be any issues with compatibility or can I expect all the features to work seamlessly?
Is there a significant advantage of creating a mobile app as opposed to a web application?
I pose this question from the following perspective, which is biased towards my lack of knowledge of the mobile phone architecture.
You can build a web application with pure javascript, css, and html.
You don't have to write different code for iOS, Android, etc.
The user simply goes to a url, and that's your app, served right there from the server.
I would like someone to highlight some of the advantages of writing specific code for a mobile web application.
What does a mobile app fundamentally have a significant advantage over a web application?
Mobile apps have some advantages:
Assets are packaged on the phone - you only need to load data from
the server, not your layout.
Users are familiar with the conventions of their chosen mobile OS,
which your app will follow.
Trends show users are spending more time in Apps than web on mobile
Can work offline (even if limited)
Mobile apps have access to native features like push notifications,
GPS, Camera, etc
There are also hybrid apps - which are web apps running in a native container. You may have heard of Cordova, which is a platform for acheiving this. You basically create your app as a web app, and it runs inside a native WebView - with this you can use a javascript API to access some native features, but you don't get many of the other benefits of a native app.
Easy to use
Use native mobile design
Don't take long time to load just load data and images but web load (data/images/css/js)
I am not very experienced with this topic, but these are some fundamentals of using mobile apps:
They are accessible offline. (but that is restrictable)
The assets of the downloaded app are stored on the phone itself, thus the main content loads much faster.
As stated before, they have access to the hardware of the device (GPS, camera, etc, sensors etc.)
You can store as much data on the device as you want (opposed to, let's say 5mb using the HTML5's Local Storage).
They have access to push notifications (such as in Android or iOS)
They can put all the powerful hardware of the phone to use.
I am installing Flurry into a Phonegap application so that I might collect better in app analytics. I've seen numerous cordova plugins allowing you to use Flurry's iPhone and Android SDKs with Phonegap
e.g. https://github.com/jfpsf/flurry-phonegap-plugin
However Flurry has released a Mobile Web SDK. I assume the Mobile Web SDK is easier to integrate with a phonegap application, however I'm concerned that it is not as full featured or ill suited for working with phonegap. Can anyone comment on which SDK should be used in this situation? Many thanks.
Posing the question to Flurry's support team I received the following reply:
"The Mobile Web SDK tracks devices on the basis of cookies. The native SDK's track it on the basis of device id.
Apart from that, the mobile web SDK doesn't provide metrics like carrier, device and OS metrics. The native SDK provides those.
Crash reporting is not supported on the Mobile Web SDK. The native iOS and Android SDK's provide that."
Ergo, the SDKs are not created equally. One should use the native SDKs whenever they have the opportunity.
Which browsers are supported in phone gap & which databases are supported by phone gap ?
Straight from Phonegap website -
PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native
applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app
stores.
What this means is it is not browser dependent. The code compiles to native application. You don't need a browser to run it.