Webview load remote url

Question

First, a disclaimer: i'm completely new to iphone, android or any mobile development. In the other side, i've been developing websites (php, javascript) for long time.

I have a website which is adapted for mobile and works great. But, there are some features i need such as prevent the screen from dimming (my site is designed to be used for many hours without user interaction while being permanently visible or for example being able to send notifications (with sound, etc., to attract user attention)).

This has lead me to consider a webview. From what i've seen, it's about creating a native app which just a webview (browser without toolbars) and using html and javascript to operate. It will use some native functions to perform some native actions (such as the ones i want).

I've searched around and i don't have a specific response to this: can i tell a webview to, permanently load the content from a remote site ? i mean, my site is php based (zend), with many jquery content manipulation. Can i tell him something like LOAD htp://www.mysyite.com and let him do everything else from it ? absolutely no local content applies, everything is remote. The webview would just be an "interface" to the website.

And additional question is: can i use jquery on it ? ajax calls ? geolocation ? i mean, in a browser i can, i just wonder if inside a webview i can.

I've read that phonegap does this. But most of the time, when taking about phonegap and about webview i general, i read people talking about loading locally the page not remotely in a permanent basis.

Finally, yes, i will build a native app in the future. But now, i simply don't have time to learn about android, ios and blackberry at the same time. Thanks a lot for your responses.

Answer 1

For Android only:

Can i tell him something like LOAD htp://www.mysyite.com and let him do everything else from it ? absolutely no local content applies, everything is remote. The webview would just be an "interface" to the website.

Yes, of course you can. Suppose you have a webview in an activity (it's really easy), you would load the web page something like:

WebView myWebView = .... // get a reference from XML or if you just created get its ref
myWebView.loadURL("http://www.mysite.com");

I would start with this API Guide article. Also, taken from WebView JavaDoc:

A WebView has several customization points where you can add your own behavior. These are:

1. Creating and setting a WebChromeClient subclass. This class is called when something that might impact a browser UI happens, for instance, progress updates and JavaScript alerts are sent here (see Debugging Tasks)
2. Creating and setting a WebViewClient subclass. It will be called when things happen that impact the rendering of the content, eg, errors or form submissions. You can also intercept URL loading here (via shouldOverrideUrlLoading()).
3. Modifying the WebSettings, such as enabling JavaScript with setJavaScriptEnabled(). Injecting Java objects into the WebView using the addJavascriptInterface(Object, String) method. This method allows you to inject Java objects into a page's JavaScript context, so that they can be accessed by JavaScript in the page.

Please be also aware that the webview is not that powerful as the phone's browser. Here is a SO thread where a friend posted an interesting question. You might find helpful the answers he got.