PhoneGap HTML5 Portability II - Chrome Web Store Hosted Apps

Last week I talked about the Chrome Web Store being another good high-traffic outlet for your PhoneGap HTML5 codebase.

One of the first issues I encountered with my Packaged App in this new outlet was with advertising.  The ads displayed just fine, as they do on the main website, except for one thing - for every click, the earnings were always $0.00.  That's not good.  After an exhaustive search, I came across this promising answer, but still, $0.00 every time.

The actual problem was that I was using a Packaged App, which essentially is your entire codebase running locally on the user's machine. It ends up that ads within a Packaged App don't have a "legitimate" source URL, according to AdSense, since it's really just local code on the user's machine.  The Chrome Web Store's alternative to a Packaged app is a Hosted App - which is a link to the URL of your application. 

The Hosted App solution is not only appealing as a valid source to display ads, but from a maintainability standpoint I now have one less place to deploy to.  All I need now for deployment is my manifest file and app icons - the Web Store app just piggybacks on my already-existing website.

Here's a sample manifest file for a hosted app:

{
  "name": "My Cool App",
  "description": "This is a test of the Chrome Web Store",
  "version": "1.0.0.1",
  "app": {
    "urls": [      
      "*://www.yourwebsite.com /mail/",
      "*://www.yourwebsite.com /otherarea/"
    ],
      "launch": {
      "web_url": "http://www.yourwebsite.com/"
    }
  },
  "icons": {
    "128": "icon_128.png"
  },
  "permissions": [
    "unlimitedStorage",
    "notifications"
  ]
}

Note that you need to specify a launch URL, as well as any other non-asset URLs you'll be using.  And you will need to verify that you are the owner of this site using Google's Webmaster Tools.

So the quest for a solution to the AdSense problem sent me down the path of investigating Chrome Web Store "Hosted Apps", which not only resolved my advertising issue, but ended up being a better solution in general for my needs.

 If you're debating which type of app would work best for you, here is a good comparison of Hosted vs Packaged apps

HTML5 Portability beyond PhoneGap - The Chrome Web Store

One of the great benefits of doing mobile development using PhoneGap is the portability of the codebase. The same HTML application is easily wrapped and built for all major devices using PhoneGap and/or PhoneGap Build. And since your app is written using HTML, CSS and Javascript, you can make it accessible as a web app as well.

After I had already published a few apps to the Android Market using this technique, I read about the Chrome Web Store. And once I digested their publishing and deployment specs, I noticed that the same PhoneGap codebase could easily be deployed to this outlet as well. I re-deployed the same apps to the Chrome Web Store a few months ago, and my experience was so positive, I wanted to share a quick overview of how to deploy to this store, and some things you'll want to think about:

The deployment is simple for Chrome Web Store Packaged Apps - basically you create a .zip file of your HTML app, along with a simple .manifest file, the app icons, and preview images. Here's a sample manifest that launches splash.html at the root of your app:

{
  "name": "My Cool App",
  "description": "This is a test of the Chrome Web Store",
  "version": "1",
  "app": {
    "launch": {
      "local_path": "splash.html"
    }
  },
  "icons": {
    "16": "icon_16.png",
    "128": "icon_128.png"
  }
}

(Full documentation)

The preview images are not required, but you'll never get very high in the rankings without them... and of course the image sizes don't match the Android Market sizings, so you'll need to create new ones. And they will not accept them until the images meet their aesthetic criteria - I had two go-arounds with them because of font sizing.

...but the pleasant surprise was the traffic:

The identical app in the Android Market after 6 months or so has about 2400 downloads, and is approaching 1000 active installs.

In the Chrome Web Store, there are 3500+ users in less than two months, and 250+ users daily, 14,000+ total. Rarely is there inactivity when using Google Analytics' real-time tools.

The manifest sample I showed was for a Chrome Web Store "Packaged App", but for my needs I found that a "Hosted App" was the better way to go - and even easier. My post next week will highlight the advantages of using a Hosted App, plus some tips on using advertising.

Achieving Broad Reach with Responsive Design + PhoneGap

The committee for The M3 Mobile Conference was kind enough to allow me to speak about creating cross-platform mobile applications using PhoneGap last week, so I thought I'd share some points from the talk here.

When you need to create an application with a specific look and feel across multiple platforms and devices, PhoneGap can be the perfect tool. But before you just wrap your application up and ship it, you'll want to use Responsive Design techniques to ensure all users get an appropriate experience regardless of their device. For instance, you don't want the 320 x 480 version of your app appearing scrunched to that size in the middle of an iPad, or even worse, in the upper left corner. Conversely, you don't want your beautiful iPad app scrolling horizontally and vertically on every smaller device. So you'll want to use Responsive Design to tailor your HTML5 application to as many devices as possible, and then use PhoneGap to progressively enhance the experience when viewed natively on mobile devices as well.

Flexible grids and media queries are important part of implementing Responsive Design in your website/application. Once the application is looking and functioning the way we want it on our desired device(s), we can use PhoneGap to access additional functionality if we are being viewed on a mobile device, and PhoneGap Build to automatically generate the native binaries for many smartphone devices using our single HTML5 codebase.

We're going to target Android and iPhone devices, including tablets, as well as most current web browsers, and the Chrome Web Store for our HTML application.

Our sample app (links to all versions below) is going to call the Google Geocode API as well as the Heavens Above API to display viewing information for the next pass of the International Space Station based on the desired position. For progressive enhancement, our app will allow mobile device users to merely use their device coordinates, and allow HTML5-enabled users to have access to their history of locations using HTML5 LocalStorage.

PhoneGap Build then compiles the latest version of the application checked into the Git repository, but most intrepid web developers can access all the necessary source code using any web browser.

The Sample Application:
(All versions compiled using identical codebase)

Android Market version

Chrome Web Store version

iPhone/iPad/iPod version

(Add to home screen to install)

Android native .apk

Sybian version

WebOS version

Web version
(all browsers and devices)

Issues, feedback, suggestions most welcome - especially on the Sybian and WebOS versions.