WebClipIcon.png & overlaying alerts

[Gerald Buckley]

I've long admired apps that signal something requires attention by way
of overlaying the WebClipIcon with numeric alerts. (Sorry, I don't
know the correct terminology for this yet)

I have an RSS feed I'd like to trigger updates to my WebClipIcon. Can
web apps achieve this? If so, how to please? For that matter can my
webapp do this once wrapped up with PhoneGap? If so, I'll source it
through their Google Group.

As always, many thanks!

Gerald

[Rémi Grumeau]

wow ... pretty good question !
You're talking about the number of updates available for the app on
the main dashboard of the iphone isn't it ? (like for emails or on the
AppStore icon when system/app updates are available)

no idea if it's possible or not :-S

Remi

Le 21 nov. 09 à 02:41, Gerald Buckley a écrit :

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[Chris Collett]

I'm not sure the update indicator will appear for anything other than an app update.

[GeoNomad]

You can change the icon any time, so you could add a number to it, but
it wouldn't go beyond the bounds of the normal icon square, as the
mail, appstore, cydia and others do.

But the icon couldn't change until the user ran the webapp, so it is a
bit self-defeating.

Offline webapps require 2 loads to update the cache, so it wouldn't
appear until after the second load if the app was cached.

I would think any real app can do it, but webapps have no access to
that without extra tools such as PhoneGap.

[Karl Prosser]

Desktop apps can tap into it. Todo list sort of apps often use it to reflect how many todo items for the day. 

- Karl Prosser

[StanRB]

Agree with GeoNomad... The best workaround would be to change the icon
every time, but imagine how many icons with numbers you have to have!
And not only that but it cannot go out of the border of the icon. I
don't believe phonegap can do it either.

Stan

On Nov 21, 1:38 pm, Karl Prosser <klu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Desktop apps can tap into it. Todo list sort of apps often use it to  
> reflect how many todo items for the day.
>
> - Karl Prosser
>

> On Nov 21, 2009, at 5:27 AM, Chris Collett <chris.j.coll...@gmail.com>  

> wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure the update indicator will appear for anything other  
> > than an app update.
>

> > On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 3:32 AM, Rémi Grumeau <remi.grum...@gmail.co

> > > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev?hl=
> > > .
>
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> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev?hl=
> > .
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> > --
>

[Chris Collett]

You don't necessarily need to have a ton of icons. You could just have one default and one that has an exclamation point or something similar to show there's an update.

[Remi Grumeau]

Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to look at it from a different angle :)

Your problematic: having a number on the icon

The real problematic: notify the user that updates are available

To notify a user, there is many ways: email, SMS, website private message, IM, ... with an url in it, since it's a web app.

Am i wrong ?

Remi

Remi

[Chris Collett]

A good point. In fact, with an opt in email you can build a mailing list, which is valuable.

[Remi Grumeau]

Well, the idea around i had was actually just email notifications, like facebook

[GeoNomad]

> You can change the icon any time, so you could add a number to it, but
> it wouldn't go beyond the bounds of the normal icon square, as the
> mail, appstore, cydia and others do.
>

I am wrong. See I admitted it!

I forgot that the icon won't change unless the user saves the web app
again, even if the manifest updates it.

AFAIK you can't change it from the html or javascript of a webapp.
Looks like it needs to be a native app to use that API.

If it could, it would not be hard to generate a custom icon with php
using GD to add a number as needed.

Peter