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

Without embedding something on a web page, the only way to do this would be with JavaScript.

Unfortunately most mobile browsers don't support JavaScript and the ones that do aren't particularly fast.

I don't think that it's possible to create a generic solution based on most of the devices which are currently around.

Answer 2

If the mobile browser supports javascript then you might be able to do this on some touchscreen devices. Otherwise it's got to be done with a plugin, java, flash, or some similar method.

With javascript you'd look at where the 'mouse' is. On some devices if the user is pressing on the screen with the stylus you can capture mouse movements and record the pattern they follow (signature).

I suspect that some mobile browsers don't pass that info onto the javascript though - they may only pass clicks...

Some testing may be in order.

-Adam

Answer 3

Yes, found one, this works on Android 2.1, 2.2, iPhone. It works really well, and comes with php code for turning your JSON saved co-ordinates into images. http://thomasjbradley.ca/lab/signature-pad

Answer 4

I don't think this is even technically possible if you're talking about having it work on a wide array of mobile browers. Most phones can at least email a picture pretty easily so you could always send it to some account where the attachments are dumped somewhere. Still, you would have to manually type in some identifier in the subject.

Answer 5

thomas j bradley's jQuery signature-pad plugin is awesome and very easy to implement.

Answer 6

All these answers are outdated.

Currently the best library is - https://github.com/szimek/signature_pad

signature-pad by thomas bradley is no longer maintained