Is it possible to use Javascript to close Android Browser?

Question

I want to put a \"close\" button in a web page (our client wants to do that)
and when I click this button, I want to close Browser (not the current tab but \"browser\" in An

Answer 1

Well, a simple work-around for this would be to create an activity with full screen WebView control, display your HTML contents (local or from the Internet) there, and add a button to close this window, with a callback to Java to close this activity. Here is all the code you would need:

browser.xml layout file:

myBrowser.java activity (remember to declare it also in AndroidManifest.xml):

public class myBrowser extends Activity {
    protected WebView webView;

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        // if you don't want app title bar...
        requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
        setContentView(R.layout.browser);
        webView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webkit);
        WebSettings webSettings = webView.getSettings();
        webSettings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        webView.addJavascriptInterface(new MyJavaCallback(), "JCB");

        // get the URL to navigate to, sent in Intent extra
        Intent intent = getIntent();
        if (intent != null) {
            String sUrl = intent.getStringExtra("url");
            if (sUrl != null)
                webView.loadUrl(sUrl);
        }
    }

    final public class MyJavaCallback {
        // this annotation is required in Jelly Bean and later:
        @JavascriptInterface
        public void finishActivity() {
            finish();
        }
    }
}

The code to start this activity elsewhere in your app would be:

    Intent intent = new Intent(context, myBrowser.class);
    intent.putExtra("url", "http://www.someaddress.com/somepage.html");
    startActivity(intent);

and your somepage.html web page could have a "Close" button with the following code:

Close

You may add as well other buttons and callbacks for them to do what's needed in your Android Java code. Calls the other way - from Java to JavaScript on the page, are also possible, e.g.:

webView.loadUrl("javascript:functionName(params)");

Also, if you want to display content from Internet, not a local file or string in your WebView control, remember to add to AndroidManifest.xml the necessary permission:

Greg