iOS7 is going to break your games

[rich]

Sad but true!

 

http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/safari-ios7-html5-problems-apis-review

 

We've been asking Apple on the developer forums for months to sort out the full-screen issue, but they don't care.

 

I even paid for a support ticket to try and contact them that way - they just rejected it, saying it was a JavaScript problem and refunded me.

 

iOS7. It's the new IE6.

[rich]

Replying to annoying sponsor emails asking why your games now look tiny?

 

There's no fix for the full screen issue. Which is just magic. Thanks Apple.

[rich]

There's no way to get rid of the address bar any longer. Most games are landscape - you should try a few of those and see how much game is actually left visible

[-AAG-]

I guess i should be glad that the mobility engine almost forced me to turn all of my games to portrait orientation

[tyson]

Hopefully Apple will introduce the Fullscreen API in iOS7.1 and fix this properly.

 

Kinda crappy, but still better than the Android browser situation.

[sandy234]

I think they are purposely doing this. Next you gona hear they have dropped support for html5.

They didnt wanted to support flash bec otherwise no1 would have used their app store. And now that html5 is growing and becoming a threat they might want to stop it. They have already disabled webgl in safari  even though it supports it.

[benny!]

Yeah.I really also wonder why Apple is slowing down the HTML5 progress.In a conspiracy way I agree with Sandy.

Let's face it...in the future the usage of mobile web is increasing while the usage of native apps will decrease.

[Mayenla]

What a complete pain. This really need to get sorted, by the looks of the game above, that's a good 1/3 of the screen just completely taken up unnecessarily.

[nem0ff]

 But, when loaded in portrait and then turned to landscape, it looked like this:

 

From Rich's link:

To be honest, if you go portrait and then landscape again, sometimes, you will get full-screen without scrolling, but you can’t get out of it. You need to test it to get the idea of the problem.

[Schouenborg]

This is a big issue. Hopefully those of you that have sold games to portals can get some extra $ to make a workaround for them.

[tyson]

To be honest, it could be worse. Stock Android browser worse.

 

At least there is the option of adding a 'Add to Home screen' arrow. Although apparently WebApps are buggy right now.

 

I can see why removing the fullscreen button was the correct web-standards thing to do *if* they also implemented the Fullscreen API so a developer could enable it.

 

Yeah, most likely Google's pull of resources from Webkit contributed to it. 

[Ezelia]

there is NO workarround for now, and I think Apple is just acting like that to force developers to write native apps and of course pay to publish them in the apple store.

 

btw I noticed that Chrome mobile is now fully supporting fullscreen API, the only constraint is that it must be triggered by a user event.
 

[sandy234]

Isnt there a fullscreen button on landscape mode??

[Gio]

I agree with above posts of people suspecting it was done on purpose to push native apps, but these days Apple don't really have a choice and will have to change this sooner or later.

 

This has a big impact on games, but it's also regular web pages that will suffer... the overall web-browsing experience is compromised if you lose 1/3 of a very tiny screen for the title bar and a couple of buttons - and lots of web pages are landscape only.

 

While in the past this would have been a case of "change your web page to make it work with iOS", now that their market share is 13% and shrinking (with Android close to 80%), it has to be the other way around. Especially with Chrome being the new stock browser. I'm betting on a redesign of mobile safari in the next iOS update.

 

Of course in the meantime, it isn't going to be fun for anyone here who's working with sponsors...

[tyson]

there is NO workarround for now, and I think Apple is just acting like that to force developers to write native apps and of course pay to publish them in the apple store.

 

btw I noticed that Chrome mobile is now fully supporting fullscreen API, the only constraint is that it must be triggered by a user event.

 

 

No work around in code yes, but you can always do something like:

 

[ozdy]

No work around in code yes, but you can always do something like:

 

 

That kind of defeats the advantage html5 games have over native apps.

 

Well, I guess I'll make only portrait games as big as 4s screen with address bars until this gets solved...

[tyson]

That kind of defeats the advantage html5 games have over native apps.

 

Well, I guess I'll make only portrait games as big as 4s screen with address bars until this gets solved...

 

I was thinking more of a "Add this to the Home screen for a better experience" vibe.

 

Better than moaning about it!

[mentuat]

now that their market share is 13% and shrinking (with Android close to 80%)

  I'm not sure how accurate that is for html5 games, on a random game with google analytics approximately 45% accessed from iOS devices and 30 - 40% from android over the last 3 months or so.

 

(Of the iOS devices around 80% are iPads though which makes things better from a screen real-estate point of view)

 

would be interesting to see the balance of iOS v android other people are seeing over a longer period of time

[jump]

> HOME-SCREEN WEBAPPS

>Webapps can’t open an external URI, such as a website in Safari, make a call, open AppStore, etc. Any URI is just ignored.

is it not possible to show ads on homescreen webapps???

[-AAG-]

-AAG-, on 18 Sept 2013 - 6:46 PM, said:

I guess i should be glad that the mobility engine almost forced me to turn all of my games to portrait orientation 

 

Uh, no it doesn't?

 

 

I didn't mean it that way. It was my decision to turn the games around because of some compatibility issues. It was hard to do but I'm glad I did and I'm sticking to it. 

[rich]

Just to be clear - you can get rid of all the browser UI by just scrolling the page a little in either orientation. However most games are page sized so don't have anything to scroll, and even worse lots of portals implement a fixed scale mode, so again can't zoom/scroll either.

 

I have tried all kinds of things - I tried making the document REALLY tall, auto-scrolling to the bottom, then scrolling back up again - but the UI remains. I may try that on a touch event, it may be linked in that way. I also tried scrolling the window and re-positioning the game to fit the current scroll point, but still no dice. Will keep experimenting.

[GrimPanda]

For landscape, rotating to portrait and back does seem to trigger fullscreen (to get out, go back to portrait).  Incorporating this into a pre-game screen could be a possible workaround.

[GrimPanda]

EDIT: Better implementation of concept:

 

The following works in chrome browser for IOS7 for games in portrait: (still working on safari)

 

http://grimpanda.com/games/sandbox/soar

[tyson]

EDIT: Better implementation of concept:

 

The following works in chrome browser for IOS7 for games in portrait: (still working on safari)

 

http://grimpanda.com/games/sandbox/soar

 

Cool workaround!  I think sometimes the best way to get out of restrictions is just good UI design.

[gobbogoes]

I ve tried it and my game is still loading in fullscreen  http://www.gobbogoes.info/crossplatform/clochard/

 

...but this is in my opinion the best way to make it run under Safari and also weeker Android devices via Firefox. Optionally you could do it with a button for fullscreen switch (Youtube style) for tablet and desktop players, that s it...