NEW FEATURE: Standalone web app!

Hey guys,

Quite a cool new experimental capability we have now. On mobile or tablet (e.g. iPad) you can now add mvertigo.org as a web app icon to your app drawer or home screen.

Benefits

The main advantage, beyond ease of access, is it gives you a bit more screen space removing a lot of the browser controls:

On Android you get really cool added advantages:

  • of being able to share a link directly from Chrome to the mvertigo app which prepares a draft Topic with a preview to the link you share. This is called an implementation of the Web Share Target API in web standards terms. Chrome is ahead of Apple’s Safari in this respect.
  • native local notification support

Hopefully they will update iOS with these great features at some stage (or be faced with more people leaving for Android!)

Prerequisites

On iOS you need the latest version of the system software (>= iOS 12.2 for example) so update your device first.

On Android you need Chrome 71 or later.

How to add the app to your phone

You should get prompted in Chrome on Android to install the web app.

Here’s an example for iPhone (I don’t presently have an Android phone so can’t demo it for you, but if anyone wants to try … feel free to post instructions as a Reply to this Topic):

  1. First have mvertigo open in mobile Safari and select the ‘share’ button
  2. Next, hit the ‘Add to Home Screen’ button:

The mvertigo web app should now appear on your home screen!:

Tadah! :partying_face::rocket:

NB You won’t have any browser controls so remember when in a Topic or deeper screen to use swipe-right to go back or hit the logo to go Home.

NB#2 One big caveat: you can’t use third party keyboards in the web app in iOS 12.2. You have to disable those. This is mostly resolved in 12.3 (currently in public beta) except on the login dialogue - my workaround was to select the password field and then use the iOS shortcut to enter my login details.

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Here’s how I did it on an Android device:

  1. In Chrome, go to mvertigo.org. Click the three dots in the upper right corner.

  2. Select “Add to Home screen.”

  3. Click “ADD”

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Thanks Anna! That’s great!

I did this the other day! My phone did a software update and bang! Add to home screen! :grin::grin:

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