Easiest way to launch webpage in android with an icon

Question

We have a website that offers an e-mail service. We would like to create a fully fledged app for this but cannot afford this right now. In the mean time it would be great if we

Answer 1

you would build an app that launches a browser intent linking to your website, or a custom WebView to launch your website in full screen without any navigation bar etc..

Answer 2

The only easier way is to put instructions on your site (directly, or as a contextual pop-up) on how to add the bookmark as an icon on your home screen. This can be slightly more complicated on Android, and depends on the browser. A simpler option for your potential users is to provide a wrapper app via the Marketplace.

It is not overly complicated to create a simple wrapper Android app in Java that launches the browser, using Intents. The essential browser launch code is basically this:

Uri uriUrl = Uri.parse("http://www.yourwebpage.com");
Intent launchBrowser = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uriUrl);
startActivity(launchBrowser);

A more detailed tutorial for creating this is available here: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android/launch-android-browser/