Web Apps
- Ray Pearce (Unlicensed)
An answerSpace can be made to look like a native application simply through the use of styling and graphics. (See our course titled "Introduction to Styling Your answerSpace" for more information).
The Web App uses the capabilities of the mobile device’s browser to determine how the answerSpace looks and behaves. Make sure you understand what constitutes Basic and Advanced modes covered in the previous module.
Web App Features versus Platform Mode
The following table shows what features are enabled when creating a Web App which uses the device Browser.
interaction features | basic | advanced |
message interactions | yes | yes |
hyperlink interactions | yes | yes |
MADL interactions | yes | yes |
XSLT interactions | yes | yes |
BlinkForms v1 interactions | yes | yes |
BlinkForms v2 interactions | see note[1] | yes |
offline features | basic | advanced |
XSLT interactions when offline | no | yes |
BlinkForms2 interactions when offline | no | yes |
BlinkForms2 pending queue | no | yes |
Advanced Mode versus Native Application
Advanced Mode (currently iOS, Android, Google Chrome, Safari, and other modern powerful browsers) supports JavaScript and includes Modernizr and jQuery (as above). Furthermore, advanced-mode also includes parts of jQuery UI (core, widget, mouse, position, button and effects-core). You can learn more by monitoring an answerSpace using the developer tools of your web browser.
Third-Party JavaScript in Advanced-Mode
You may use the "external CSS" and "external JavaScript" settings (in answerSpace Setup) to load in additional resources. We provide this feature in order to keep the platform flexible, and to foster experimentation.
We do not support the use of external JavaScript, it is up to you to make sure that you are loading in resources that are not incompatible with the libraries already provided by the platform.
When we update jQuery and jQuery UI, it is your responsibility to ensure that the external widgets that are loading into the answerSpace are compatible with them. BlinkMobile sends out Tech Notices several weeks prior to such a change.
If there is a URL for the specific JavaScript widget files required, the integration of third-party code with the BlinkMobile Platform should pose no problems.
Complete UI frameworks like Bootstrap, Sencha Touch are likely to cause issues with advanced-mode, especially if they tamper with History and Navigation.
The table following shows the features available in Advanced Mode in comparison to an App Shell
Advanced Mode Platform Features | advanced | native |
device-storage for offline assets | limited[2] | yes |
cold-boot when offline | see note[3] | yes |
device-storage security | limited[4] | private[5] |
[1] Refer to the course titled Introduction to BlinkForms for details.
[2] offline assets include pending forms, answerSpace configuration and data suitcases, which should be limited to less than 0.5 MB for best results
[3] requires Application Cache as detected by The HTML5 Test, although it is broken upstream on many devices