android.webkit.WebView - Web Browser Base Class

Android Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟android.webkit.WebView - Web Browser Base Class

This section provides a tutorial example on how to create an Android project to build your own Web browser using the android.webkit.WebView class. The first version failed with 'Webpage not available' error.

Android SDK offers a nice view class, android.webkit.WebView, that helps you to build your version of a Web browser. Here is my first version of AndroidWeb application:

Create AndroidWeb project with the "android create project" command:

C:\herong>\local\android-sdk-windows\tools\android create project \
   -k com.herongyang.web -a AndroidWeb -t 2 -p .\AndroidWeb

Edit the activity class Java code stored at \herong\AndroidWeb\src\com\herongyang\web\AndroidWeb.java:

/* AndroidWeb.java
 * Version 1.0 - Show Google home page
 * Copyright (c) 2015, HerongYang.com, All Rights Reserved.
 */
package com.herongyang.web;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.webkit.WebView;
public class AndroidWeb extends Activity {
   @Override
   public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

      WebView view = new WebView(this);
      view.loadUrl("http://www.google.com/");
      setContentView(view);
   }
}

Build the debug package and install it to the emulator using the "ant" command:

C:\herong\AndroidWeb>\local\apache-ant-1.8.3\bin\ant debug

C:\herong\AndroidWeb>\local\apache-ant-1.8.3\bin\ant installd

Run AndroidWeb on the emulator. Too bad. AndroidWeb 1.0 is not working. The following message is showing on the screen:

Webpage not available

The webpage at http://www.google.com/ could not be loaded because:

net:ERR_CACHE_MISS

The error is not very helpful. I will try to find the root cause in the next tutorial.

By the way, the same program running in Android SDK R17 gave the following error message:

Webpage not available

The webpage at http://www.google.com/ might be temporarily down or
it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

Suggestions:
   Make sure you have a data connection
   Reload this webpage later
   Check the address you entered