Manifoldjs Builds Apps for Your Platform

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

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 →

Manifoldjs with Crosswalk, a simpler dev experience for Android

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

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

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

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 →