Are there any good captchas specifically designed for mobile apps? - mobile

Is there anything that is less intimidating than recaptcha for mobile apps? My app is built with JQuery Mobile and most likely will never be available on the desktop. I am hoping there is a more visual captcha that would not require typing. So far most visual captchas I have found seem too large for a mobile app. I am mainly looking for something that is visual and small enough to fit within the average mobile screen. Any suggestions would be appreciated, I would even be willing to build something from scratch if someone has a good idea.

I don't know if you are using HTML5 or not, but there is a pretty cool captcha that I've used called MotionCAPTCHA. What it does is it presents a shape and the user traces the shape with their finger on their mobile device. Its pretty cool. I've used it with Android and it works pretty well. It requires jQuery and HTML5.

Damn, that MotionCAPTCHA link appears to be dead. I found this question looking for similar things to what we're working on at my current company.
We have a HumanDetect mobile SDK trying to solve a similar problem. The overall idea is we grab sensor data from the phone so we can determine "bot or not". You ask the SDK for a token, then send that token along with your REST request, and then that token can be validated. If everything works as expected only a mobile device in the hands of a human should produce a token that validates as "not a bot".
It's native code, not using the browser. For the end-user's point of view, it is transparent, the user isn't asked to perform any action.

Related

Is it Possible to see my wesbite im working on in my Iphone?

I am wondering if i can see my WIP website on my Iphone without publishing it. Is there any app or anything so i can see it on my phone. I know you can for example resize you browser to act likte a phone and with google you can use the tools to get the screen to be as a phone, but its not the same as having to see the whole thing on your phone, that way you can see the whole thing responsive and can work easier from there.
Best practice would be setting up a development environment and publish to that instance. In many cases you'll find developers with sub-domains like dev.domain.com for purposes just like this. Hope this helps...

Screen sharing and screen control on android and iOS using WebRTC

I've to share a mobile screen and display it on a browser using WebRTC. I then have to take control of the mobile screen.
I've researched this and know I can share a screen browser to browser using chrome(with extension) or firefox(after certain flags are set). Some information I've read suggests that screen sharing on mobile is not possible and then another article said it was but I think they meant be sharing through the chrome browser on a mobile.
Some of the the information and posts I read are dating back to 2013/2015/2016 and I wondered if there is any new information on this?
Is screen sharing on mobile devices(android or iOS) possible using webrtc now?
is screen control on mobile devices possible?
Thanks Andrea
I also investigated this topic a few days ago and it seems to me we are on the verge of the next step and the technology hasn't totally settled yet. Screencapture is mostly working with (very) up-to-date browsers and (still) an extension or some kind of white-listing. I could not find any kind of hint that a "remote control" mechanisms are part of webrtc and the getUserMedia implementations. Unfortunately.
ICE seems to work fine for most scenarios (if you don't mind waiting a minute) and Tickled ICE adresses the problem in an interesting way.
Mobile is very confusing indeed as the market is even more heterogeneous.
Maybe we should open a wiki or a chat channel or whatnot they habe nowadays on stackoverflow :-) I think I will have to read about this "community wiki" checkbox down there...
The most promising thing I could find was
https://inthelocus.com/
Still trying it out in different scenarios.
[This might not be an answer...] I was on the same topic and then I noticed there's an existing tool (SDK) to serve the similar purpose: https://cobrowse.io. It works good in both the demo video and the simulator web page. Yet I'm not sure if it utilises WebRTC...

HTML 5 Mobile Web App Workflows? --- (Advanced Questions)

I'm beginning to build my first mobile web app and I'll be using a combination of html5, css3, javascript, and at the end I'll be wrapping it up with Phone Gap (Cordova) then deploying it out to both the Android and iPhone marketplaces. I won't be using anything else like java, php, or c#.. This is strictly front-end based, so the questions below are in retrospect to the this and will play a big role in creating my mobile workflow.
As I'm fairly seasoned in the above front-end technologies, mobile apps are a different world, which leaves me with some questions...
Mobile App Questions (Workflow)
1.) Should I build it with 1 page (single page app) or multiple pages? I know I could us an AJAX solution here to give the "1 page" look/feel, but what's the smartest solution?
2.) Ad placement, in retrospect to 1 page/multi-page apps, I assume multiple pages would be a smarter choice? The more refreshes the better for CPM or is this considered bad practice? ...or can I achieve ad refreshes with smart AJAX placement inside a 1 page app?
3.) Gestures vs. buttons and css - I've been building responsive websites for the last year and have noticed that I can achieve a lot of effects with css alone (i.e. hover, focus, active, overflow... to name a few). When is it necessary to use gestures? Hammer.js seems to be doing a pretty good job of these effects and I'll definitely be taking a closer look at that plugin.
4.) CSS3 Animations vs. Jquery Animations vs. WebGL Animations - What's best? According to this link, CSS 3 wins... But I've heard about css3 REALLY slowing things down (i.e. using border-radius). What's safe to use for a mobile app?
5.) The "back" button on android phone, I assume it's used just like a web browsers back button.. So if I build a "1 page app" that could be a bad choice if a user clicks "back" then immediately exits your application. I'm sure I could use an alert box to question the user first, just curious on if their is any recommended solutions?
6.) The "settings/options" button on an Android phone, I assume it will do nothing if I don't tell it to... But, if I wanted to tell it to do something how could I?
7.) File System - What's the best way to access the file system (opening media, saving media, saving media to "custom app folder name", sharing media to facebooks/twitter/instagram, accessing contacts, texting, email, etc...), Since I'm only using front-end technologies, what's the best ways to handle this? It seems like I've read somewhere that Sencha and/or Phone Gap have JS solutions for this.., what's your preferred way and how does it actually work?
8.) Testing - When I start implementing all of these "File System" commands, how on earth do I test this? I'm of course coding on a computer, Will Android and IOS emulators really do the trick or will I have to manually load my mobile app to a server and check? Is their a way to test locally with my phone? (that'd be cool :)
9.) Performance - I know performance is key with any application but ESPECIALLY mobile apps. I use jQuery (hey, I'm a UI guy :), and I know I'll be using a few other smart scripts so mobile phones will play nicely (SouthStreet Progressive Enhancement Workflow)... but how much is TO MUCH?? In the future if I wanted to use more powerful js libraries such as knowckout.js or angular.js, how would this effect the performance of a REAL html 5 mobile app?
These are the questions that are running through my mind right now. If anyone has some good knowledge of a tutorial that explains these things or if anyone can point me in a good direction I'd really appreciate it! I also hope that these questions will help other poor lost souls like myself ;)

Port an OpenLayers application to mobile devices

After making a duration/cost estimation, I'm about to start developing a desktop application using OpenLayers. I've never had experience on it before, but have the support of some coworkers who do.
Now we have to estimate the time and effort it would take the same application to be viewable in mobile devices. I know the existence of openlayers.mobile.js, but nobody in my company has ever worked with it before.
I know it has some advantages over the normal OpenLayers library, such as pinching for zooming, and so. But, does it has any blocked capabilities? I mean, if I write code to draw a line on a layer in the desktop application, change the simbology of a layer, add a buffer arround a polyline, etc.. will it still work with the mobile library?
Is there funcionality in the desktop version that is not in the mobile one?
I'd need to know before estimating what can I offer in the mobile version, and how hard will it be to get so.
See examples tagged with mobile:
http://dev.openlayers.org/examples/
The next OpenLayer versions will probably have better mobile support as this is something many users are interested in.

Possibilities for full blown silverlight applications

Since the launch of Silverlight 2 I was expecting a lot of full blown Silverlight applications popping up but still there seem to be little evidence of this. Does anybody know of such applications out there in the wild. And also what would be the obvious applications you would develop in Silverlight. I would say mail clients are bad examples as they just as well could be written as a web/ajax app. As Silverlight is far more powerful than web+ajax possible candidates should be impossible/akward implementing as a web/ajax app.
The ones that comes to my mind is
Photo and imaging editing apps
Reporting applications
Office applications, Word/Excel...
Edit:
Added from posts
Games
The point isn't that the app need to fill the whole screen just that it isn't just a small part of a webpage, or you could call it a full blown application running inside the webbrowser, only using the webbrowser as a host.
I think the Medical app that Microsoft itself developed shows pretty well what could be achieved with silverlight http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/
As for image editing then as I understand its a bit difficult as Silverlight lacks a Bitmap API to be able to do per pixel image editing...
Edit:
I noticed you added Word/Excel to your question and there comes the problem that Silverlight doesn't have a rich text editor built in and there hasn't been real good examples of custom implementations. There is one http://www.codeplex.com/richtextedit but I haven't seen any applications that actually use it.
I'm working on one in the medical domain.
This started as an update of a Mac classic application but due to the amount of work involved, broadened to considering other toolkits. I convinced them to go for an initial WPF desktop port to be followed by a Silverlight version.
I don't know one so far, but I could imagine that it could be used in a kind like the fullscreen video playback on youtube.
How many fullscreen desktop apps are there? Most application don't need the entire screen. If you don't want to be distracted by menus and taskbars and so you go fullscreen. Another type of applications that can use fullscreen are games.
You are limited in fullscreen to certain key presses such as arrow keys, tab, enter, and space so this rules out some of those types of apps. They have done this for security reasons so an app can't hijack the screen and record the keypresses, but I wish they could come up with a scheme to sufficiently warn the user then allow it if they consent.
An application Microsoft seem to like to show case is the AOL mail client written entirely in silverlight.
Personally I follow the rule is if you would not write it in flash you would not write it in silverlight preferring AJAX in most cases. In the past most large flash application have failed such as the flash word processor (cant remember the name) while AJAX enabled applications such as google documents have taken off.
Finally I believe until moonlight (linux and mac support) has been released and more general users have silverlight downloaded developers will be reluctant to use it widely even for smaller apps and gadgets.

Resources