iPFaces Android Client

The iPFaces client application is developed using Googles’s Software Development Kit (SDK) in version 4, it means you are able to run the application on Android OS version 1.6 or higher. The client parses the received form description and builds screens with standard UI controls from Android’s UI. SDK usability provides appropriate functionality of the phone’s location service or other specific features in future releases, such as compass, camera and other.

Installation & Prerequisites

Installation of the iPFaces client application via Android Market is really simple, just like any other Android application.
 

The client application is provided free of charge.

How to install it

1. Find the application in Android Market. You can search for it by entering “ipfaces”.
2. Install it in a standard manner (like any other application).

Requirements

iPFaces was developed and tested on the Android version 1.6 or higher . There is no guarantee that iPFaces will be able to work on older versions of Android OS. It is compatible with all Android devices with those operating systems. To use the iPFaces application it is necessary to have data connection to the Internet through a WIFI connection or data plan activated with 3G, EDGE or GPRS data connection.
 

User guide

Following successful installation of the iPFaces client application, an icon will be displayed in the list of the applications. The iPFaces client application could be run by touching this icon.

If the application is run for the first time, the application will try to connect to the server “examples.ipfaces.org”. You can change the URL by going to application preferences. If the client application is run for the second time, the address from the application's preferences will be used.

If the entered address is not valid or there is an error with network connection, an error describing communication error will be displayed and preferences screen will be dispalyed. If the entered URL is correct, the initial application screen will be displayed.

Configuration of the iPFaces Android’s client is very simple. There is only one text field for the iPFaces application address (server’s URL).

iPFaces settings page

Client Internals

The iPFaces client supports almost all basic native UI components. All of these elements are rendered on the iPhone screen and their look is customized like all iPhone elements that we can see in the OS GUI.

The Following components are supported by iPhone’s iPFaces client: form, screen, label, textfield, password, textarea, checkbox, select, option, button and image.

Another supported component is the Location Service which is used for obtaining the user’s current GPS location. It can be used, as described in the sample application, to calculate distance between the user’s position and another place in the world, or for any other purpose you can imagine. GPS component is not displayed on the iPhone screen. If you want to display GPS coordinates on the screen you can do that by using either labels or text fields.

The autorotation feature is also supported. The iPFaces application is able to change the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape and back (depending on the actual position of the device).

Landscape screen

Portrait screen