Could you walk me through this new android deployment option?

I have finished the app and now need to deploy to android. My client is getting a Android developer's license so we can put it on the Play store. However, I remember reading recently that you created a new deployment option for Android.

Could you please let us know how that works?

Thanks.

Mike

Hello Mike,

Yes; of course. Recently App Builder incorporates the ability to prepare the appropiate stuff in order to deploy our applications as a Progressive Web Application. By following the previous link you can get more information from Google.

Basically we deploy the application as a web application, in a hosting of our property, but, they are also integrated in Google Chrome for Android (right now, next Mozilla Firefox and probably Opera and others) and allow the users to put an icon of our application into the device's home screen.

Certainly the application can be run by taping that icon and then an special browser is shown to the user, including certain splash screen that the system prepares using some app's information like the name, description, etc. We can specify some options like the theme color, the background color, etc. Look at the app's options dialog under the WebApps tab.

This deploy method have some advantages, since we are deal with a modern standalone browser and not an Apache Cordova's WebView. Of course we can't use Apache Cordova features in such applications, but we can continue using the other App Builder stuff, controls, actions, etc. Just like any other HTML5 application ready to be deployed in modern desktop and mobile browsers.

In my honest opinion the Progressive Web Application concept it's very interesting and the integration looks good right now. And it's easy with App Builder! Just check the "Create manifest" checkbox from the WebApp options tab and you are ready. Deploy the application's files into your server and visit it using Google Chrome in your mobile: then select from the Chrome's menu the option "Add to the home screen", and that's all!