Integration with phone functions

This section describes how to call a number of functions and/or apps on a mobile device from a mobile web application. When deciding whether or not to use these, note that a user will not be automatically redirected back to the browser after finishing a certain task in the app.

Send email

A mailto-link will automatically link to the standard email client.

Link to email client

<a href="mailto:foo@bar.com">Email</a>

Call number

You can add a link to the phone dialer using a tel-link, as follows:

Link to phone dialer

<div onclick="screenad.makeCall(0123456789);"></div>

Send text message

You can add a link to the messaging app using an sms-link, as follows:

Link to messages

<a href="sms://0123456789">Sms</a>

Link Video to Youtube

NB: Most devices will have the Youtube app installed by default, but one cannot be completely certain. On Chrome/Win7 the link will instead direct to the Youtube-website. I’m assuming this will be the case on mobile devices without the Youtube app as well, but this hasn’t been tested.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw8i28bNoYY&ob=av2e">Air – All I Need on Youtube</a>

iOS-specific functions

This section describes how to start a number of iOS-specific apps, specifically Videos, Music, iBooks, App Store and iTunes.

Link to Videos app (iOS)

<a href="videos:">Click here to go to the iOS Videos app</a>

Link to Music app (iOS)

<a href="music:">Click here to go to the iOS Music app</a>

Link to iBooks app (iOS)

<a href="ibooks://">Click here to go to the iBooks app</a>

Link to App Store (iOS)

<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/flipboard-jouw-sociale-nieuws/id358801284?mt=8">Click here to download flipboard from the App Store</a>

Link to iTunes (iOS)

<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/oceania/id529974977">Click here to go to iTunes</a>

Links to items in iTunes can be obtained by opening iTunes on a PC or Mac and right-clicking (command-clicking) and choosing copy link. NB: This documentation is a work in progress. More research needs to be done as to how to start a specific video, song or iBook and how to obtain a link to that video, song or iBook. Integration with Google Maps.

Integration with the Calendar

On iOS, you can create “click to calendar”-links, which users can use to add an event you create (in Outlook or Google Calendar for example) to their calendar. Android does not support this. This is how it works: create an event in your favorite calendar application and save the invite.ics file (or however your calendar application names the file) with your creation (if you are working with Sencha Animator, put it in the assets folder). Then simply create the following hyperlink in your project:

Click to calendar

<a href="invite.ics">Click here to add this event to your calendar</a>

Unfortunately, on Android, the invite.ics file is simply opened as a text file and the calendar application is not opened.