"Add to home screen" - Integration

phreak · November 2014

Hi all,

I'd wanted your Feedback on AppIcon-Bookmarking on Home-Screens of Smartphones. Still a lot of smartphone users are not capable of saving a bookmark to their screen of a website or even think about it. Especially for communities the reminder and the continuos return of a user is important.

Just one example might be, that my communities have a lot of users who are posting their first comment with the information that they have been reading the forums now for quiet some months (and now they decided to join). Sure there are many cases that could help gain traffic and probable users. One very important is to get memorized. An App-Icon does that greatly (that is why i use Tapatalks BYO additionally > but it sorrowly still has quiet some bugs, btw. now ready for Vanilla 2.1+).

One nice and very popular example is Cubiq.org's integration of a bookmarking helper.
http://cubiq.org/add-to-home-screen

So to make a point: What nice and lightweight integrations do you know to get a Web-App-Icon on the Home-Screen of a user? Any scripts you know of? I'm asking because it might be an idea to create a small configurable plugin for Vanilla. With 3 or 4 fields in the backend for integrating a text, link and picture.

Thanx for inputs,
phreak

vrijvlinder · November 2014

Have you tried the VBookmark plugin ?

http://vanillaforums.org/addon/vbookmark-plugin

phreak · November 2014

Its your plugin, but i think it does something very different than what i was mentioning above or?

vrijvlinder · November 2014

Still a lot of smartphone users are not capable of saving a bookmark to their screen of a website or even think about it.

You can use it as a guide to make the add-to-home-screen into a plugin for vanilla. The idea is to add those icons to the discussions like the bookmarks do so people can do this and is plain to see. All you need to do is call the js file and css file and make a new js jquery file with this to add to the head of the documents .

<script>
addToHomescreen();
</script>

Bleistivt · November 2014

Cool idea, I created a prototype that basically implements the demo page from the plugin you suggested, you can try if that works for you:

https://github.com/bleistivt/AddToHomescreen

phreak · November 2014

@Bleistivt‌: Wow cool. I wonder how it is handled if people do "X" (close) the JS-popup and do not wanna get bugged every time they visit the forum. Is there any cookie function "noPopupAfterX" included?

Bleistivt · November 2014

The script already does that. What I have yet to figure out is how to include the touch icon so it will be shown as the app icon using Chrome 39, Android 4.4, it doesn't work for me on the cubiq demo page either.

vrijvlinder · November 2014

Remember to create the favicons in the proper size to match your forum favicon. That is what will be saved as the app bookmark . If you don't have one it will grab any pic and look bad.

For example if you save this forum as an app on the home screen the image is the landing page of the forum and can't even tell what it is because there is no app image.

You can try the plugin favicon to add the sizes you need for this to look good.

Bleistivt · November 2014

Adding a resize option or different fileupload inputs for different sizes is easy, I will try that later, thanks!

phreak · November 2014

Following link resources need to get implemented to make an "App Icon" like a bookmark on the smartphone homescreen.

Bleistivt · November 2014

Ok, I have decided to leave the icon functionality to other plugins like

http://vanillaforums.org/addon/favicon-plugin
or
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/touchicon-plugin

which already provide working solutions for that and just include the addtohomescreen script.

Also the most recent version didn't show the message in the right language so I reverted to the version they use on their demo page.

Bleistivt · November 2014

@phreak the plugin by @vrijvlinder adds these resources. If she wants, I could make a pull request for her plugin to make them uploadable through the dashboard.

vrijvlinder · November 2014

With my plugin all you do is add the images to your design images folder of your theme. It adds the meta tags to link them.

just make the images and name them like you did above add them to your theme. there is no need to upload in the dashboard considering you will only do this once.

phreak · November 2014

@Bleistivt: Cool, cool, cool. If you upload the plugin to the AddOn Repository on vf.org, it might be important to point to @vrijvlinder‌ plugins or? Because some users are not so firm with this.

Do you know how the Cubiq plugin learns to stop popping up, if users are not interested doing so?

vrijvlinder · November 2014

Yes that would help them to figure out at least the images they will need , the sizes mostly to work with all devices. A link to where to make them is provided on my plugin page.

Bleistivt · November 2014

@phreak it sets a cookie. When you clear your cookies it will pop up again.

There is also the option to show it on the second visit, if that is the preferred behaviour, I can switch that on.

phreak · November 2014

@Bleistivt: Uhh already published and i'm mentioned. I'll give it a look. if u want send me your donation mail as PM.

@all: Keep up donations and ideas. Makes the addon repository more lively and Vanilla more fun... you'll see. There are some fast devs in da house.

"Add to home screen" - Integration

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