Cordova, PhoneGap, Ionic - UWP Windows 10 Release Build Failed ( SQLlite )

Recently I had some issues of building packages for Windows 10 app I have developed using cordova. App was working in debug mode without issues. But in release mode it was crashing when opening the app.

So first question is how to find the errors when they only appear in release mode.


1. Go to the platform folder and open the windows native project.

2. Run windows native project in release mode and it will fail with the error message that it cant debug.

3. Now switch to debug mode and run your project .

4. In output window you will see all the errors.

5. Fix all errors and try to publish to windows store again.

What to do and Not do when your windows computer infected. ( Spyware, Malware and Bots )

Most windows 10 computers easily  get infected due to following reasons.

1. Using pirate copies of commercial software.
2. Installing unwanted web browser extensions - chrome, firefox.
3. Installing free softwares without checking the author of  the software.


So if you feel your computer is not doing well here is the list of things you should not do.

1. Do not make any online payments until you satisfied with your system;'s safty.
2. Do  not use any free virus removal tools or do not run any browser based system checks.
3. Do not install a cracked version of antivirus software.



So here is the To Do list.

1. Backup your important data to a portable hard drive you can format.
2. Install a trail version of a commercial antivirus software and run a full system scan.

You can use AVG, Norton, Kaspersky any commercially recognised product.

3. After scanning you can remove the anti-virus software  and switch back to windows defender.

Speed-up windows 10 - ( Devices with non-SSD drives )

Hi All

If using windows 10 and you are using a normal hard disc in your computer you may have experiencing slow starting-up, slow loading in apps and some lagging when using your applications.

Here are the tips for speed up your system.

1. Disable location service if you are not using.

Search >> Settings >> Location >> Switch Off Location Service

2. Disable un-wanted startup apps.

Right Click on Task Bar >> Task Manager >> ( Click  More Details if You Cant See Startup tab) >> Startup

3. Disable windows search - This will reduce the penalty of  indexing your files when you using the computer. ( Disabling windows search can slow down searching for files and folders )

Search >> Services >> Windows Search >> Disable Service

4. Disable Superfetch - This one is tricky. This function suppose to speed-up your system for NON-SSD based systems. But some times disc operation percentage can go up to 100% because of this service.

Do this if your disk operation percentage is 100%   without a valid reason. You can check disk operation percentage  from the task manager.

Here is how to disable Superfetch service.

Your connection is not secure - Firefox

There are few things you can do like check the date and time of the computer etc.  But my issue was I had running instance of fiddler web debugger. All I had to do is turn off fiddler.

 

Cannot uninstall Sourcetree windows 10

If you cant fully uninstall the third party git manager tool, sourcetree in windows please follow these steps.

1. Try to delete C:\\local\appdata\atlassian folder completely and then remove all the shortcuts.


if the you cant delete appdata\atlassian folder that means there are some GIT processes running.


2. Go to task manager and kill all GIT processes and Try step 1 again.

 

Upgrade node js to latest version in Mac or Windows

I recently tried to upgrade my node js version on both Mac and Windows environment. Tried most of methods in internet using NPN, BREW etc.

But the easiest way to do this is reinstall Node JS.

For Mac

Download the latest node js package for mac and install it. This will overtire the old installation.


For Windows

Uninstall the old node js version and install the latest node js version for windows.


Please restart the computer after installation in both environment.

Cortna search is unresponsive in Windows 10

 Hi All

In windows 10 sometimes search get frozen. I did not research for the reason for this issue as the fix was easy and This will happen very occasionally.

All you need to do is go to task manager and end all cortna tasks. Please look at the screen shots.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is slow or not opening in windows 10

There are two type of this problem.

1. Adobe reader start taking more than 5 minutes to load.
2. Adobe reader not starting and it's showing multiple adobe reader processes in  windows task manager.


The Solution

1. End all adobe reader tasks in task manager.

2. Right click on adobe reader short-cut and set compatibility mode to windows 8.

3. Open adobe reader. Now adobe reader will load without a problem.

4. Go to Edit > Preferences >  Security ( Enhanced ) 

5. Set the compatibility mode  back to normal. 

6. Restart adobe reader. 

Microsoft Office alternative options for windows, linux and mac

As Microsoft Office 360 and 2016 is bit expensive for most users it is a good idea to go for open source alternatives.


https://www.libreoffice.org/

Libre office is a good alternative and I have used libre office in my Mac and Ubuntu operating systems. Libre documents can open using MS office and vise-versa.

https://www.openoffice.org/

Open office is also a good  alternative software for MS office suit. I haven't use open office for long time but it is a reliable software to use in most platforms.

Tips to save money when buying computer, laptop parts and cables

Please  note that this article using facts and data in Australia but I think this is true for most developed countries.



1.  Don't buy  

Again this is the best advice I can give for most common laptop, PC and Mac users. Sometime you actually really need the device and you just blindly buying it just because some retail shop giving you a 10% discount on the product. So please think at least 3 times before buy something.

Also if it's for a one time use just try to burrow it from a friend. But always return it on-time.

2. Do no buy it from major retail shops

This is a common mistake most people do when they need a cable or some other small part for a computer. These big retail giants has lots of expenses like rent, wages of workers and insurance etc.
Just try to buy the product on ebay, amzon or ali express and you will find the same product with a discount more than 30%-50%.


3.Try facebook market place or gumtree

Some times offices  and some people tend to put these items on online market places for free or for a very small amount of money. Even these things are used, especially cables they can last longer. .


4.Cables and Accesries for Apple products are expensive 

Just consider this as when you choosing an apple product, They are very good products and comes with an additional cost.

5.Do not throw cables away

You never know when you need things and please keep your old cables and other commuter parts for at-least four to five years.








 

iTunes connect UI freezes.

When you publishing apps for apple store using itunes connect screens are freezing more often. Main reason behind for this is poor internet connection. Make sure you have a good internet connection when you publishing apps to apple store.

I'm always using my mobile's hotspot if the wi-fi or LAN is super slow.

Android app missing permissions after publishing - Cordova, Visual Studio 2017

Hi All

All you have to do is update your android manifest file with required permission before create the release APK.

** You have to do it before every release if you cleaned the project.

 android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" />
 android:name="android.permission.FLASHLIGHT" />
 android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
 android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
 android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />

Tips to save money when you buying a laptops and computers.

Tip 1 : Do not buy!!!

I know this is a strange tip. When you got the first idea to buy a new laptop and computers please consider why you need that. It may be your old laptop is broken or has some sort of software issue.
Try to repair it by yourself or go for a professional technician or ask  for help from your friends. You'll save lot of money this way. Laptops are designed to last for at-least 2-4 years. 

Tip 2 : Do not buy any software from the retail shop!!!

When you buying a laptop or desktop pc sales person will try to sell some products like antivirus software, office suits and some other commercial software.  Please try to buy these stuffs from online sources and you can save up-to 20-30 dollars .

Regarding antivirus you may do not need one as windows defender is good enough to protect you form most of the attacks.



Tip 3 : Buy used.

Buying a used laptop/desktop will at-least save you  100-200 dollars. Use ebay, gumtree ot facebook market place to buy used items.

Cordova Gradle wrapper missing in android SDK

When you develop apps with Cordova and Microsoft Visual Studio there are some important facts you should know. I learned these things over 2.5 years of period.

1. Visual Studio tools for apache cordova is Microsoft product  and it's not updated alongside with other tools using by app developers.

• Android SDK - Updating Regularly
• X-Code -  Updating Regularly ( I would recommend not to use windows based tools to publish your app to apple store. please follow this to learn how to publish your app to apple store without using remote debugging tools. https://guntucomputerhacks.blogspot.com/2016/11/visual-studio-2015-cordova-remotebuild.html  )
• Cordova and Plugins - There is a big version gap between microsoft tools for Cordova.

So lets focus on this graddle issue. The latest android version released in 2018 is android 8.0 and 8.1 Oreo . But unfortunately microsoft tools for apache cordova is still supporting Android 7.1 - Nougat.

So in case you have updated your android  SDK and tools you might need to rollback that update to use Microsoft tools to build and release your app to Google Play. 

But again try to  keep Visual Studio for development tasks and always try to native tool set for release purposes. 

    

Backup solutions for normal windows pc/laptop users. ( Not for geeks )

I have done few data recovery jobs for normal personal computer users who couldn't start their computers because of several reasons. Even though it's not a big deal to get your data back when your computer is in good shape and your windows operating system  isn't working.

But it's very hard for some one who doesn't  have the skill of doing it. Also if you go to a technician they will charge you at least  hundred dollars to do these things.  Other than that you'll have to expose your personal data to a third party and they can do some damage if they are not very professional people.

So my advise is its always good to prevent these scenarios before something happened to your windows operating system. If you follow these steps you will be confident enough to format your hard disk and  install a fresh copy of windows operating system.

1. Always make at-least two partitions in your hard disk and use one only for operating system and other one for data.

2. Do not save any sensitive data in your OS drive. If you concern about privacy and security of data use window's default  Bitlocker encryption tool. ( You cant use bitlocker in windows home editions )

3. Use a personal file sharing application like dropbox or google drive and configure it to sync your data automatically.

4. Use external hard disk to backup your data time to time.

5. Make sure you always have your data in at lest two physical locations in case of a disaster. ( Cloud and Your PC will be ok for a basic backup plan )

6. If you want to use an antivirus software please buy a commercial antivirus. Never use a pirate copy of  an antivirus software. ( Simply do not use any pirate copies as there are many opensource alternatives around )

7. Do not use an older versions of antivirus software. This will cause compatibility issues and  will  reduce the speed of your computer.
     

How to load image on webview from ms-appdata:///local

I recently updated my  Visual Studio 2015  apache cordova project to visual studio 2017. I had few problems with working with angular js otherwise everything worked in windows 10 environment.

But what I noticed was images from ms-appdata:///local folder couldn't load  to img tags. I tried many ways like row html, dynamic tag creation and add url as a base64 data url.

In base64 solution it worked. But I want to get the file itself  as my app was supporting iOS and Android as well.

So after trying hundred things solutions was simple.  You have to set img-src  option to All ( *  ) Content-Security-Policy meta tag of the html file.

Please check following screen shot. You need to add the part with the read border to load image resources from any location.

Reference URL  if you need to see more options.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Security-Policy/default-src

Invalid command line switch for tsc.exe. Visual Studio 2015 - 2017

After I installed visual studio 2017 while I had visual studio 2015 in good working condition my visual studio 2015 cordova Javascript project gave me this error.


Invalid command line switch for tsc.exe


Possible cause for this one is with visual studio 2017, you'll be getting new typescript libraries. So visual studio 2015 is confusing when selecting the highest typescript version automatically.

If your project is javascript based cordova project fix is easy.

1. Open project file in notepad or any editor you using.
2. Edit following section.

* You cant use this fix for typescript based cordova projects.
* If you still see some errors your visual studio 2015 may needs a repair.  Please follow the link bellow regarding repairing vs 2015.

https://guntucomputerhacks.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/current-package-installation-is.html

Write MP3s for old car stereos - ( 2002 to 2010 Cars )

Recently I bought a 2005 Toyota Corolla manual car and it has nice classic car stereo which only support for Digital Audio Compact Discs ( Knows as Audio CD's ) and MP3 discs.

So I burned a mp3 disk with windows media player as a data cd but my car player seems to be not reading it.  When I investigate this windows media player in windows 10 is creating folders automatically based on song's title, artist or language etc. 

There are two ways you can create supported mp3 disc for  old car audios.

1. Create data disc with windows explorer - drag files in to empty disc and burn.
2. Even though 1st one is a good solution but I would recommend using Power ISO as a burner tool. which is almost a free software and working really well is recent windows versions.

https://www.poweriso.com/download.php

Using GeoTag when taking photos through apps you developing - Apache Cordova

If your app need to tag photos with the location you need enable this feature from Cordova's config xml. Some android devices are tagging the photos with the location even if you havent enable this feature from the app. But for iOS it is compulsory to add this line to cordova configuration file to tag photos with the location.

reference. Cordova Documentation
https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/reference/cordova-plugin-camera/

Package downloading problems - Apache Cordova Tools Visual Studio 2015 - "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\ApacheCordovaTools\packages\vs-tac"

Previous blog post.

https://guntucomputerhacks.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/current-package-installation-is.html



Hi According to bellow post I had to repair vs-tac package in my Cordova Tools for Visual Studio 2015.

But when visual studio was trying to download the package by itself it's giving connection error when connecting npm severs.

You'll see something like this.

request to http://registry.npmjs.org/optimist failed, reason: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:8888


So now lets see the solution.

Solution 1

1. Add C:\Windows\System32 to user's environment variable under "path"  collection.
2. Restart your computer.
3. Uninstall Node JS and install the latest stable version of Node JS.'
4. Go to Tools --> Options --> Tools for Apache Cordova --> Cordova Tools --> Clear Cordova Cache and try to build your project.


If you are able to build your project and deploy the you'll be ok. But if you still getting  following errors then proceed to solution 2.

Error 1 - Current package installation is corrupted. Will cleanup and do a fresh installation. 
Error 2 -  Request to http://registry.npmjs.org/optimist failed, reason: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:8888

Solution 2

1. Open command prompt as administrator.
2. Enter following command. This is to install package manually.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>npm install -g "C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MICROSOFT VISUAL STUDIO 14.0\COMMON7\IDE\EXTENSIONS\APACHECORDOVATOOLS\packages\vs-tac"


If you are successful that means your visual studio 2015 has some problems. You may try run visual studio as Administrator or Repair your visual studio. If you see following error that means you have some problems with NPM network configuration settings or you are not connected to internet.

* Please check your firewall settings before proceed.

Lets follow bellow steps to fix any configuration issues in NPM.

1.  Open C:\Users\\.npmrc file and remove highlighted line if you have proxy.

2. Check the registry URL as well.  Also you can use command line to reset these URLs 

3.  Try running command in step 2. 

Hope this helps.

Current package installation is corrupted. Will cleanup and do a fresh installation. ( Apache Cordova Tools for Visual Studio 2015 )

Cause - According to my research of the issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I had well working apache cordova project with Visual Studio 2015 and it worked without any issue for years. Recently I installed Visual Studio 2017 and did some research of creating a cordova project in higher version. I did not have any issue until I installed Visual Studio 2017 Update pack released on 4th of April 2018. After installing the update pack I had following error message whenever I'm trying to build the project. Even if I create a brand new project I had the same issue.

Current package installation is corrupted. Will cleanup and do a fresh installation. 

So the visual studio tried to repair the tools for cordova. If its successfully did that you will not have any issue. But in my case I had so many updated tools  and Visual Studio 2015 kept giving errors while downloading new npm packages. Specially following package.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\ApacheCordovaTools\packages\vs-tac  

I have put the solution in different blog post as these are two separate problems.

Click on following link.

https://guntucomputerhacks.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/package-downloading-problems-apache.html

Cordova platform add android gives the error: “Error: The provided path is not an Android project.”

This is happening when you missing some files in your android platform folder in your cordova project. 

Same thing can happen with the windows projects as well.

Visual Studio or Cordova engine has the capability  of  creating platform directories even if you delete them. But in this case the folder was there and it had some files in it. So the best solutions for this issue is trying one of these steps.

• Clean your project. ( Visual Studio )
• Rebuild your project ( Visual Studio )
• Delete platform directory that you have the issue and build the project.  

Samsung smart hub terms and conditions downloading frozen

Hi All

We recently requested a service from for our Samsung HDTV from Samsung Australia due to a backlight problem. But when we power on the tv and trying to setup smart hub screen was frozen at level 3 'Downloading Terms and Conditions' .

So the fix was simple.

1. Power off and on the TV.
2. Go to menu.
3. Go to support.
4. Go to self diagnostics.
5. Find factory reset.
6. Reset the TV to factory settings. ( 0000 is the default pin if you haven't change it already ).


Thanks! 

Error MSB3073 The command "node "prebuild-81.js"" exited with code 1

This happens when you trying to build your cordova project without all required files. In my project I had delete the index.html file accidentally. So I have two tips to fix this problem.

1. Check for all required files of your cordova project.
2. Remove read-only attribute from your project folder.




 

Windows 10 screen suddenly got black and white

Well ... You just found a short-cut to make your screen black and white. So press 

Windows + CTRL + C

to get your screen colors back.