Signature capture possible in various mobile web browsers?

Question

My company is considering offering a lightweight mobile web site for data entry in the field (we already have a thick-client mobile application). One hard requirement is th

Answer 1

You may want to consider OpenSource jQuery plugin: https://github.com/applicius/jquery.signfield/

Answer 2

http://mysignature.brinkster.net - Does not work for a Mobile browser http://thomasjbradley.ca/lab/signature-pad - Does not work for the IE. It has canvas and flash technologies. IE has problem with canvas tag.

Answer 3

Canvas, with Flash (Through FlashCanvas) worked well for us with jSignature. http://willowsystems.github.com/jSignature/

MIT + Works (was specifically written to run) everywhere there is Canvas or Flash. + tested on iPad, iPhone, Android tablets, phones.

Answer 4

I think the picture idea is really clever, but I'd take it one step further. Some mobile devices (phones in particular) don't even do file uploads in a browser. I'd generate an operation specific email address, a hash of some sort of transaction id and the user id for instance, and allow it to be sent as an email attachment. This should catch a very wide variety of clients, as well as not adding terrible complexity.

Answer 5

First off, I'm a C++ developer, not web, but have written and deployed a Windows Mobile signature capture routine in C++ / MFC. If you want to use or translate the code, let me know and I'll post it here. It is not particularly elegant, but does the job. Basically, you need the button clicks and mouse movement messages available.

Having already been down this road, my conclusion is that it is not a great use of technology. The screens tend to get scuffed and unresponsive on the signature capture area, making them useless not only for signature capture, but also for other operation. Our experience was that for mobile sales force type applications, it limited the life of the hand helds to about a year, and resulted with less than happy users.

The camera idea seems much cleverer and isn't going break the device. IMO you'd also get much better signatures, touch screen ones are awful.

Answer 6

There is a jQuery plugin to do this now -> http://thomasjbradley.ca/lab/signature-pad

The previous link is inactive as of March 17, 2016, but the relevant repository is on GitHub: https://github.com/thomasjbradley/signature-pad