After working on the iOS version of the ImageFilter plugin for Phonegap, I began working on an Android solution. There are a lot of resources out there about Image manipulation but none that really worked to use for Phonegap. After lots of searching and a major crash course in Java I found the solution!
This project is going to be on Github and I would love to continue to refine it as my Java skills are not as solid as I would like them to be 
anyway here is the plugin!
With the release of the new iOS from apple, they have made a few changes that can have a very large impact on phonegap apps using localStorage. They are now placing all localStorage in a temp directory that can and will be deleted at random times. Meaning if you are using localStorage to save usernames or passwords or anything, that data is no longer safe!
Never fear though! The Phonegap Google Group has some very smart people and some good conversations about how we can overcome this problem. Kerri Shotts created a pretty awesome solution that is actually very easy to implement.
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If you’ve used my Facebook and phonegap tutorial this short article will be of use for uploading photos to the users Facebook albums!
In an ideal world we would be able to upload straight from our app, but unfortunately that isn’t how the web works, or Facebook for that matter. We will need to first create a little server side script that is going to save our image an do the uploading for us.
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So with creating the ImageFilter plugin I thought it might be useful to understand how to create a new filter!
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The iPhone has an amazing camera, and phonegap has a nice api that lets us use the camera and capture images. But what happens if we want to edit and apply filters to the images? I ran into this question a few weeks ago and began working on a solution. The first problem is how do we create filters? My first thought was maybe I can use HTML5 Canvas elements and apply filters like that as there are already tons of libraries that do that. Problem that came up was that this was VERY processor heavy and would take between 5 – 20 seconds to render and quality wasn’t that great.
Intro ImageFilter. After realizing that the canvas route wasn’t going to work, I then thought what if I pass the image to the native os and do all editing there? Easy enough to say but a tricky bit to figure out. Hopefully this can serve as a time saver so you!
I am going to keep this short. The most important line you can possibly have in your css for your mobile web app is this.
*{ -webkit-transform: translateZ(0); }
this one line will enable hardware acceleration on all html elements. You will be shocked at the boost in performance.
that is all. Carry on.
So I’ve been working a lot with phonegap lately and I am loving it! The one thing I am not such a fan of is sometimes things I need to do aren’t really well documented or the current solution doesn’t work for me.
The localNotification plugin is an awesome plugin to let you schedule notifications to go off at specific times and dates, but a few things it lacks is the ability to attach callbacks to your js, as well as attaching sound to the alerts.
In the iOS documentation they talk about having specific actions associated with your localNotifications as well as sounds. So after some tinkering I added to the phonegap localNotification plugin, I’ve added the ability to attach callbacks into your javascript, as well as attach a sound to the alert!
I’ve put the project up on GIT so feel free to download it, I am working on getting this added to the official plugins of Phonegap, but for the time being use this project.
Here are the details –
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Adding a social layer to your app can be a really great thing, it can help users share their experience with others. Getting Facebook and Twitter integrated into your app should be an easy task right? Currently the phonegap plugin for Facebook is lacking, which is a bummer, but never fear there is always a work around!
Facebook is a great tool for companies, it allows them to have conversations with fans, as well as give a more personal feel and voice to the company. One of the biggest tactics on Facebook for a company is a “Like” campaign. This is where you create a tab that holds special content or a contest for those who like the brand. It’s a simple concept – show “Like” content and “Non-Like” content depending on if a user likes the brand or not.
I was working on an app recently that required me to remind a user of something via a localNotification from phonegap. While there is a plugin that works great its documentation is lacking to say the least… Here is the proper way to schedule notifications and have them appear if the app is offline, and how to resume your app with a callback!
Since originally writing this I made some changes to the actual LocalNotification plugin that now allow for sound and proper callbacks.
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