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I am working on a mobile site that will run alongside a mobile app being developed by another company. My product manager has provided a spec, in which she is mentioning two options to implement a feature:

  1. Clicking on button from mobile app will open mobile browser, where the user will need to login again, and proceed to perform required action.

  2. Clicking on button from mobile app will open in-app browser, user does not need to login, and completes the entire flow and closes the in-app browser.

My question is: I do not understand difference between mobile browser and in-app browser. Does in-app just mean mobile browser opened from inside the app? And if that is so, then using PHP will I be able to recognize the current login in the app? or is there any way I can ask the mobile team to set a session when they open the "in-app" browser such that I can access that session and determine who is logged in?

As you can see, I am pretty ok with PHP and server side coding, but my knowledge of these new mobile technologies is very poor...I guess I am getting just too od for this job now.. sigh.

Any pointers are very much appreciated.

Undefined Variable
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3 Answers3

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I think by in-app browser he has meant WebView which opens web pages as a part of application

sadegh saati
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  • Hello Mohammed! Thank you for your answer. So if we open a URL in webview, will it work just like regular webpage does? And is there any way app logged in user can be retrieved in WebView? – Undefined Variable Jul 13 '15 at 16:08
  • @UndefinedVariable for the first question short answer is "Almost" and for the second one I think it's better to be sure about what your project manager has asked then Post a new detailed question – sadegh saati Jul 13 '15 at 16:19
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This question seems to be duplicate although here is the ans you probably need.

Android WebView VS Phone Browser

Have you any doubts left?

Community
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NilayDani
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  • mobile browser: a complete application inside the mobile device. Common examples are Chrome, Firefox mobile, Opera Mobile.
  • in-app browser: it's an instance of WebView. That's a normal view inside your app layout that is able to render web-content.

To open the webview as a currently app-logged user, you generally will add some token parameter to the URL that the web development team can use to identify the user on the server.

The WebView generally behaves like a browser, but you should implement a WebViewClient to properly steer some of the navigation patterns to make sure it behaves inside your app, the way your app should.

Budius
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