Thoughts @

an apple a day…

Apple iPhone Safari Browser

Well, last week was all about Apple and WWDC07. This year I actually got to participate in a session that kicked off the content and media track at the conference with Garrett Murray from Blue Flavor. I represented the enterprise and large legacy system team mentality while Garrett was more of the cowboy coder and indie developer guy. The session was called “Iterative Cocoa and Web Application Design” which covered topics having to do with agile processes merging with best practices in User Centered Design (UCD) and although I know very little about Cocoa itself, the session went (from what I hear) very well. Thank god for Garrett’s participation.

But what is more significant is the movement towards the web as THE platform for the iPhone. As many of you already know, during the Steve keynote (which was my first ‘in person’ keynote, and the longest I’ve ever stood in line for a non-theatrical event in my life) it was announced:

(from Roughly Drafted) “Finally, Jobs presented how third party iPhone apps will be delivered: as AJAX web apps in the iPhone’s Safari browser. These “web 2.0” apps will have access to the iPhone’s dialing, maps, contacts, and use the same scrolling and touch features, such as the two finger pinch zoom.

As anticipated in “An iPhone SDK? Predictions for WWDC 2007!,” Apple announced third party support for the iPhone would not involve an SDK, but rather be based entirely in Safari, using web based applications that can both use AJAX style updating and take advantage of iPhone features and native interface ideas.

Widgets are just a bit of HTML and JavaScript, essentially a mini web page. While some widgets can launch other applications or tie into more sophisticated functions, the majority of what they do is fantastically easy to port to other platforms, particularly ones that already run Safari’s WebKit, as the iPhone does.

Jobs says the web is a “very modern way to build applications,” citing Google and Salesforce.com as examples of companies based entirely on web platforms. This will offer more than just simple Dashboard Widgets; Safari provides a full custom development platform.”

Daniel Eran Dilger’s post on the history of the browser is worth taking a look. He states: “A related but commonly unasked question is: why has web browser software—a fairly simple and mundane concept in the tech world—been at the center of one of the largest and most well known vendor wars? The short answer, of course, is that the simple web browser is really a critically important key that unlocks a phenomenal amount of power in both consumer and Enterprise markets.

Today, Chris Messina twittered from a session about iPhone web development at Supernova Open. He comments “wow, so much resistance to the iPhone’s lack of SDK.” People are noticing the lack of J2ME, flash and Java support. Steve is offering the WEB as the new development platform and the new wave of web-based applications and thin-client solutions are about to emerge. Will it stick? Will developers adhere to these new rules as ‘best practice’ or will it be a one-off run? The big question is will the desktop movement to browser based applications and 2.0 technologies migrate to the mobile phone and will the industry open to the change (the key term being ‘open.’)

Posted on June 19th, 2007 in Thoughts
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Written by Kelly Goto

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