
Show HN: Automatically convert a website to Android and iOS - weiyin
https://gonative.io/
======
Osiris
Does it make an actual native app or just a wrapper around a web view? I have
a couple of (Android) apps that I use that are clearly just a wrapper and it's
really annoying.

1) The back button always exits the app instead of going back a screen as
would be expected.

2) Switching to another app and coming back causes the app to reload rather
than staying on the screen it was on when I switched out.

~~~
kennyledet
Nice work, but there is a huge problem and I really hope you fix it ASAP or
else I'm SOL for updating the app I just released with this.

Apparently the version numbers are not being increased for each successive
build, and you really need to do this. Why? Because I can't even update my app
by editing the source code, changing the version number (which is already
kinda annoying to have to do) and uploading the new apk release due to it not
being signed with the same certificate you guys use....

~~~
kennyledet
Update: I just went ahead and modified the source. I had to refactor the
package name and import R.java manually. Really a bug to have to do, but
thanks anyways for the cool service!

Here's the new link, should show up in a bit:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kennyledet...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kennyledet.algorithms.app.grmeb)

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sumukh1
I tried it out and for those who are asking for the difference between
PhoneGap and other tools is that this takes your website, adds native
components like navigation for menus that it detects and login capabilities.
For example in about 10 minutes I "built" a Twitter app using the twitter
mobile interface. It has native login/signup, a sidebar for accessing
elements, and native search. I don't know how well non-mobile interfaces will
translate over - but the native components make it useful.

This is pretty good and it's really what building a hybrid app should look
like. There's probably a lot of areas it can be improved.

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aith
I'm new to native apps and I've been struggling to find a solution to get my
HTML5 game on the app store. This is absolutely incredible. Took 30 seconds
and worked flawlessly! THANKYOU!

~~~
Kiro
Did you try PhoneGap? If so, what failed? I'm in a similar position as you.

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pachydermic
This is certainly interesting, but it duplicated my own nav on my webpage.
Don't know how it could be smart enough to detect that even though I have a
very standard setup. In any case, I suppose it would be good for a quick and
dirty start to your app and you could flesh the rest out later? I wonder who
will actually end up using this for real.

~~~
weiyin
what we normally do when using native sidebar navigation is hide the web
navigation w/ css - there's a configuration option "Check here to support
custom styling" where you can set:

nav{ display: none; }

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JimDabell
Apple have a rule against making apps that "are simply websites bundled as
apps". You should probably mention that somewhere on the website to avoid
having a bunch of people pay for a developer account only to get their
generated application rejected by Apple.

~~~
nacs
There are tons of web-view based apps in the App stores. Phonegap bases their
entire business on a similar concept.

~~~
declan
There's a difference between a full-featured multi-screen native-feeling app
implemented in a webview with Phonegap and a wrapper around an existing web
site. You can do a lot of interesting things in a webview and come, for some
purposes, reasonably close to a native look and feel. The previous comment was
right to warn about Apple's policies.

(I spent some time playing with Phonegap but it was two years ago and a simple
app took 30 seconds to launch on an iPhone 3GS. Probably significantly better
now, and faster as hardware has improved.)

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yincrash
just tried this because I hate the android wikipedia app (which is also just a
wrapper). the only thing it needs is an intent filter for the website so any
urls (like wikipedia urls) will be receivable by the app.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Try the new Wikipedia app beta which came out yesterday:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia.beta)

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logn
I tried this with a site of mine. GoNative works great and there's a lot of
future potential too. However, at a certain point, we're just re-mapping the
WWW sites 1-to-1 to wrapper apps. Regardless, I place the blame for this on
users, entrepreneurs, and consultants, and I think GoNative is really just
giving everyone what they want (for better or worse).

Related (add bookmarks to home screen):

[http://lifehacker.com/5809338/add-web-site-bookmarks-to-
your...](http://lifehacker.com/5809338/add-web-site-bookmarks-to-your-iphones-
homescreen)

~~~
fiatjaf
Tons of improvements and new cool (and useful) technologies being released for
the browsers and yet we have to spend ALL of our time writing JAVA code for
biggy-catch-a-piggy STUPID phone apps with features already delivered by a
THOUSANDS of different web applications.

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swozniak
Really interested to see the end result. I submitted and received the
"Success" notice about two hours ago - how long should I be expecting before
having access to a build?

~~~
weiyin
Normally ~1 minute, but our build queue got a bit out of hand. We've fired up
a few more build processes and are working down the queue. You should get an
email shortly. Sorry for the delay!

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booruguru
SUGGESTION: You'll probably want to include your tagline "Convert your website
into native Android and iOS" in the homepage title tag...for SEO purposes.

~~~
weiyin
thanks. we're using [https://prerender.io/](https://prerender.io/) to create
static files for the crawlers and still fixing up the seo.

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switchb4
Shows this when I open the link: Error: EMFILE, open
'/home/gonative/launch2/app/index.html'

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jqm
Looks very cool.

Minor note of little importance: 'Features > Performance > "abandonned" ' is a
misspelling.

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krzrak
I worry that it may encourage creating hundreds of low quality apps cluttering
the App Store/Google Play.

~~~
EwanG
Speaking as someone who has stuff in Google Play - perhaps. But it may also
make it easier for someone with a great idea but not a lot of programming
experience able to get something out that outweigh having to index a number of
low quality apps. Given the filtering mechanisms on both stores that are in
place, I'd be less worried about getting a lot more "bad" apps than making it
easier for good apps to get noticed - a current problem that likely won't be
affected one way or the other by this.

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weiyin
Seems our site is lagging a bit w/ the traffic. We are working on spinning up
a few more node instances.

------
weiyin
We're spinning up a few more build servers. Build times should get back to <1
minute in a bit.

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Dorian-Marie
Exactly what I was looking for. I tried using PhoneGap but installing all this
SDKs is a pain.

PS: I can't even subscribe to your newsletter, everything seems broken:
[http://i.imgur.com/Ss42bJE.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ss42bJE.png)

~~~
Dorian-Marie
So I tried it and the result is amazing considering how little time it took to
make it:
[https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-HMbRacJQ7WQ/U5IdwmumEzI/A...](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-HMbRacJQ7WQ/U5IdwmumEzI/AAAAAAAACIU/xzjyE5W7v-0/w698-h1344-no/iphone+app.gif)

~~~
weiyin
great to hear! thanks.

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DevoAKA
You're console.logging everyone's app settings and email after they've created
an app.

main.js:1480

~~~
weiyin
We pushed a fix ~10 mins ago. All good now. Really sorry.

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deanpeterson
I tried installing the apk on my Android 2.3.4 phone but I just get the error:
"Parse error There is a problem parsing the package." I do have my settings to
allow applications from unknown sources so that is not the problem.

~~~
weiyin
The android error is not very descriptive; it's failing because we require at
least version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) for the integrated action bar and Holo
themes. I'll add a description to the website.

Can you give android studio a try? We moved away from eclipse and never looked
back.

~~~
deanpeterson
I was able to get past the eclipse error but like you said. I don't have 4.0
or higher so I can't try it out on a device until I find a compatible phone. I
am motivated to use this because it seems to make my grids work on mobile. I
use Sitepen's Dgrid that is supposed to work for mobile but when I add a
little extra css or bootstrap they stop working on mobile devices. The demo on
your site seems to make them work again (at least on the emulator inside the
link I am given).

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palakchokshi
Created duplicate navigation. Extremely limited navigation options. Scrolling
is sketchy, when scrolling ends shows random item from the list not the one
the scroll stopped at. Not ready for mainstream yet.

~~~
weiyin
thanks for the feedback. one thing to be aware of is that the apps run much
faster smoother on device versus in browser simulator. we'll also be
supporting more navigation options, as well as other native components, going
forward.

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fiatjaf
Firefox OS, we need you to stop the "native" crazyness.

~~~
funinobu
Because everything can fit in the hypertext model?

~~~
grimtrigger
Are you aware of something that can't?

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blueicelt2004
What exactly is this looking for in terms of creating the sidebar? Loading
your android source code and going to your site nothing appears in the
navigation menu.

~~~
weiyin
for the sidebar in particular, it's looking for menu_default.json. hope that
helps!

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mschuster91
Looks interesting! I guess you're running this as a "spin off" and make money
with supporting native-unexperienced app developers in going native?

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kkhire
this is real cool. How did you guys go about building this?

~~~
weiyin
We created template apps in native Objective-C and Java, and drive everything
off of config files. Our site and backends use MongoDB, node, and express.
Build servers run XCode and gradle / Android Studio, all on OSX.

Feel free to check out the source code:

[https://github.com/weiyin/gonative-ios](https://github.com/weiyin/gonative-
ios)

[https://github.com/weiyin/gonative-
android](https://github.com/weiyin/gonative-android)

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booleanbetrayal
Cool project. Definitely useful as a starting point into more advanced
customization. Thanks!

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codesuela
Is it possible to use getUserMedia on iOS with your app?

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Kiro
What's the difference from PhoneGap?

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ing33k
not bad at all ! however its not able to convert a jquery mobile web app I am
working on.

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gukov
Crashes Firefox on OSX.

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Touche
Seems to be down.

~~~
weiyin
Our mac mini build server is working through the queue. Takes about 30 seconds
to build each app.

~~~
Touche
I meant your site is down, at least in Firefox. Looks like a certificate
problem. [http://imgur.com/k5AEzvD.png](http://imgur.com/k5AEzvD.png)

~~~
weiyin
Hmm, you must have hard fail turned on for certificate revocation checks. Not
sure why our OCSP stapling seems to have problems. What OS and Firefox version
are you using?

~~~
vibragiel
It fails here with Firefox 31.0a2 (Aurora) on Ubuntu.

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notastartup
Really curious about how app.io is able to do this so smoothly, seems like
they are running iOS virtualization over canvas vnc. It's so freaking smooth I
feel like I'm using an actual app.

I would love to know how they are able to pull this off. I tried the ipad as
well and it's smooth! Very little lag.

