#PhoneGap HotShot Mobile Application Development 3.x
Note: The book and scripts within this code package use the
--copy-fromfeature of the Cordova CLI. This was introduced in v3.3.1, so if you are not at that version, it would probably be a good idea to update your version of Cordova or perform the copies from the templates to your project manually.
NOTE: If you utilize the code package available on GitHub at https://github.com/kerrishotts/PhoneGap-HotShot-3-x-Code-Bundle, the fixes below are already incorporated into the code.
Shortly after the book was published, Cordova 3.5 was released. The projects within have been rebuilt, and thus far, no obvious issues are apparent. Should any issues be identified, the repository and this file will be updated with the corrected information.
Just an FYI, but Apache removed the org.apache.cordova.keyboard plugin from the repository. It's still available, but the command to add it is now different.
cordova plugin add "https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugins#master:keyboard"
Affects: All projects
Also, for whatever reason, recent versions of the plugin are essentially no-op on iOS 7 -- which means you may experience unwanted scrolling when the keyboard is visible. You can select a specific version of the plugin to alleviate these problems as follows:
cordova plugin add "https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugins#17bdd5fe62:keyboard"
Affects: All projects
This is because there is no auto-save mechanism in place. One could add such a mechanism by listening to blur events and calling saveNote and savePath as appropriate. But this doesn't handle the case should the user put the app in the background without bluring off a field.
In this case, FilerV7 has been modified to show an example of proper persistence of data. The note that is currently being edited is saved to localStorage (since we can't use native plugins). If the app is paused and then terminated, on the next startup, the data will still be in localStorage, and the app will create the note from localStorage. This makes it appear to the user as if no data was lost.
Of course, it's still possible to lose data -- if the app is terminated out-right without an intervening pause, there's no chance. In this case, one could use a combination of the two plus a save every few seconds in order to reduce the chance of data loss.
PathRec and PathRecNative has also been modified, though this modification is not as complex, since both apps use localStorage for their storage.
For more information about how FilerV7, PathRec, PathRecNative was modified, see the pause-resume-handling.md document in this code package.
Version 0.3.0 of the media-capture plugin isn't returning the length of the video; no known fix at this time.
Affects: FilerV5 (Chapter 7), FilerV6 (Chapter 8), FilerV7 (Chapter 9)
We were naughty; to simplify layout we utilized calc (). This causes problems on any Android device less than 4.4. You can get around this behavior by utilizing percentages instead. Where applicable, we've added appropriate defaults in the CSS (they are marked with comments indicating that Android < 4.4 doesn't support calc).
Affects: FilerV4 (Chapter 6), FilerV5 (Chapter 7), FilerV6 (Chapter 8), FilerV7 (Chapter 9)
In portions of our CSS, we used calc (). This doesn't work on iOS 6 because it doesn't have the -webkit- prefix.
Affects: FilerV3 (Chapter 5), FilerV4 (Chapter 6), FilerV5 (Chapter 7), FilerV6 (Chapter 8), FilerV7 (Chapter 9)
On Android < 4.4, these may appear below the video and images. This isn't horrible, since the area can scroll, but it's not great, either. This is due to use of calc; the fix is to add width:49% to the following rules:
.tablet.landscape .ImageNoteEditView .ui-text-box,
.tablet.landscape .VideoNoteEditView .ui-text-box
Affects: FilerV5 (Chapter 7), FilerV6 (Chapter 8), FilerV7 (Chapter 9)
Although not mentioned in the text, due to the way the off-canvas view is implemented using Calc, it is unavailable for use in Android < 4.4. Use a regular split view or a split-overlay. It's not impossible to make your own, however, YASMF doesn't support it.
Affects: PathRec (Chapter 10)
This occurs only for Android testing, and is a result of the emulator using the host's GPU. If you have the option, uncheck this value, and the display will return to normal.
This occurs, as far as I can tell, only on Android < 4.4, and seems to be a result of using GPU. It should only occur on a virtual device, but if it does occur on real devices, the best option is to disable GPU acceleration for the app.
YASMF's FileManager has a _resolveLocalFileSystemURL method which calls the File API's resolveLocalFileSystemURL method. In YASMF, it strips out certain initial strings from the path, since they are problematic on iOS. Appendix B mentions private as being problematic, but on iOS 6, localhost is also problematic. The framework in this code package has been updated with the fix, but in case you weren't using the framework, I wanted you to recognize the problem.
Essentially, the Media API may return a path like this:
file:///localhost/var/.../tmp/someImage.jpg
file:///private/var/.../tmp/someImage.jpg
Both private and localhost need to be stripped before resolveLocalFileSystemURL works correctly.
Affects: FilerV4 (Chapter 6), FilerV5 (Chapter 7), FilerV6 (Chapter 8), FilerV7 (Chapter 9), Appendix B