Building and Debugging Office Add-ins

 


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Adding to the “fold” of Manifoldjs & Plugging-in to Vorlon.js You may not be familiar with Manifoldjs. It’s a tool that generates platform apps (like iOS, Android and Windows 10) from your web app. With version 0.5.0 of Manifoldjs we’re excited to enable new platforms with our “Bring Your Own Platform” model. Our first new platform is Office Add-ins. Office Add-ins fit in perfectly with other Manifoldjs platforms because these add-ins are all written in HTML and live on your web server, just like your Continue reading →

Manifoldjs Builds Apps for Your Platform

 


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We’ve been working hard on a brand new version of Manifoldjs over the past few months. It has all the same great functionality you’re use to from Manifoldjs, but now it’s extensible. That means you can add on your own creation platforms to Manifoldjs. Prior to this new version, Manifoldjs generated apps for the following platforms: iOS Android Windows 8 Windows 10 FireFox Market Apps Chrome Apps A number of developers and gadget makers approached us, wanting to generate apps for their platform. With the Continue reading →

Santa Uses W3C Manifest and Manifoldjs to Build Apps

 


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Every year NORAD builds a web app to help kids track Santa as he delivers presents from his sleigh on Christmas Eve. Every year the Web app gets better and better, has more features and improved functionality. In years past, it’s gotten to the point where the functionality on the website has far surpassed the available functionality of the native apps in the app stores. So this year Santa is breaking the mold and using his web app to build his store applications. Of course Continue reading →

Designing Web Code in a Native App

 


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Over the years I’ve heard developers say, “you can always tell when it’s a web app,” insinuating that web apps are lacking when compared with native apps.  These same folks will claim that web app performance is poor and the design is inferior.  Although that might have been true years ago, today’s web fairs much better than the web of yesteryear.  Our runtimes are superfast, leaving no lack of performance for apps. And the best user experience on the web is generations ahead of that Continue reading →

Manifoldjs with Crosswalk, a simpler dev experience for Android

 


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With version 0.3.0 of Manifoldjs you can now choose to build your Android apps with Crosswalk instead of the traditional Android webview. It’s quite simple to implement as well. First, make sure you have Manifoldjs installed and running: Step 1: install node.js from nodejs.org Step 2: open your favorite command prompt (terminal on mac or linux) and type: > npm install manifoldjs -g Now, you simply add the Crosswalk flag to your launch parameters, and watch what happens next: > manifoldjs http://www.thishereweb.com –p Android –c Continue reading →

ManifoldJS – Building Simple Hosted Web Apps

 


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Today at //BUILD/ 2015, we announced manifoldJS – the simplest way to build hosted apps across platforms. While John Shewchuk did a great job building a hosted web app right on-stage (you can see the recap here), I’d like to go into a bit more detail: why hosted web apps and how to build one for yourself using manifoldJS. Why hosted and manifoldJS? Hosted Web Apps bring the best of the web to store apps on with minimal effort. They are a great way to Continue reading →

Understanding the Manifest for Web App

 


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Since the onset of app stores, we web developers have been looking for a way to make our web sites look more “appy”. Browser makers have been giving us tools to make that happen. First, apple started supporting a few meta tags that filled the gab for web apps, allowing web apps to be “added to home screen” and then optionally, dropping the browser chrome, setting a custom icon and adding a loading splash screen. To do this, we simply added a few meta tags Continue reading →

Web App Terminology Explained

 


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The one thing you can always count on when it comes to the web is change.  When you are writing for native platforms, APIs and run times change maybe once a year, but in the web world every day can bring change with every browser update, or every new version of a framework.  With all this change, web developers have gotten excellent with advancing with the times. One area that has been morphing over the past few years is that of the Web App.  With Continue reading →

Hosted Web Apps explained

 


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A Hosted Web App should not be confused with a “Hostess Web App” which would be a web app commemorating the world’s finest junk food, the Twinkie, whos greatness has only been supplanted by the deep fried Twinkie (frozen Twinkie dipped in batter, deep fried and the served on a stick).  No, although just as cool, a “Hosted Web App” is a store app (think google play or windows store), where the content of the app is hosted on a web server.  As in, a web site. Continue reading →