The site contains several screen casts which outline the capabilities both from the users and the developers perspective, and give a practical example of how to use the technology. Since it’s a new program we feel there are some kinks, such as the prompts which are presented when loading your content into the BigFive browser, however once there the lack of a button bar at the bottom of the screen was a noticeable improvement.

This is definitely a sign of things to come and we look forward to seeing what can be done with Big Five, PhoneGap and other apps like LocationWEB, which we will discuss in an upcoming article.

Check out Dirk Holtwick’s site at http://www.big5apps.com and let us know what else you’ve seen that bridges the gap between web and native apps.

-Shaun Mackey

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“The iPhone has been all the rage lately, from complaints to praise it has all been heard. Whether you hate it or love it, the fact remains, as a developer you cannot ignore it. And here at DZone we could not ignore the chance to provide even more means by which you can access your development links. In this article I will share with you how we went about recreating DZone for the iPhone. ”

Its a great read for anyone interested in iPhone microsite and web app development, and contains many code examples and technical discussion on the execution of the project.

Check out the article here or the iPhone version of DZone at http://dzone.com/iphone .

According to Peter Burrows of businessweek.com, “Many analysts expect Apple (AAPL) to sell around 11 million iPhone 3Gs in 2008 and another 25 million in 2009. But perhaps the most optimistic forecast is from Piper Jaffray (PJC) analyst Gene Munster, who expects the company to sell 13 million this year and 45 million next year. ”

With a brand new two year contract accompanying each sale, it’s a pretty good sign the iPhone will be around for awhile.

Check out the full story here.

The interview was conducted at iPhoneDevCamp2 at Adobe earlier this month, and will appear on an upcoming episode of CoolMacPicks on mymac.com

Check out the interview at http://www.mymac.com/podcast/microsites.mp3

It’s a great intro to some of the intricacies that go along with iPhone web development. We think it’s a great intro tutorial for any designer or developer looking for a quick way to begin creating iPhone web content.

Check out the article here.

This tutorial outlines a simple way to mimic the side-to-side flicking behavior common in iPhone applications such as “Photos”. This is accomplished using a recently discovered technique that Matthew Congrove demonstrated earlier this week. Check out a functional example here, or the video below.

Though the above example is more complex, the following CSS example demonstrates the animation technique he used to create it. WebKit makes this very simple by providing hardware-accelerated animation capabilities using CSS. The syntax is as follows:

.divSlide {
        -webkit-animation-name: "slide-me-to-the-right";
        -webkit-animation-duration: 1s;
}
@-webkit-keyframes "slide-me-to-the-right" {
        from { left: 0px; }
        to { left: 100px; }
}

In the above example the author used JavaScript to trigger the animation. He’s posted a great tutorial on his blog outlining the example.

This concept could be applied to other CSS properties such as colors, border sizes, opacity, etc. It’s worth noting these techniques are only available for iPhones running the 2.x version of the device’s OS, because they take advantage of WebKit CSS properties that may not be available to earlier versions of the OS.

As noted on Tuaw, “MobileSafari includes some CSS 3 support, including advanced DOM selectors and support for animations and transitions. Chances are, other browsers will have limited support for CSS 3 draft standards, and whatever you write probably will only work in MobileSafari and Safari 3 on the desktop.”

While the App Store and Native App support may be receiving the current buzz, the future of mobile web content has certainly not been left behind. Stay tuned for a series of follow up articles and tutorials detailing other capabilities of web development for 2.0, and let us know if you have any ideas or feedback in the comments.

-Shaun Mackey

We’ve covered this idea of fixed positioning several months ago on our site, but it’s great to see a functional example of this capability.

Here’s a video for those without iPhones. Note that the animation is much choppier on an actual iPhone because it’s running on the SDK. Here’s an excerpt from the article.

“With the release of iPhone OS 2.0 came some great improvements over previous Mobile Safari versions. CSS animations are in (though buggy), as well as native touch events like touchstart, touchend, gesturechange, etc.

I played around with these new goodies while hunting for improvements to build into Pickleview. The most fascinating change to me was that you can now prevent the default behavior of elements with a simple preventDefault() call. It allows a user to drag an element around the screen without having to worry about the viewport wobbling about.

I grew curious as to what I could specifically call this on, and started testing out several elements. Turns out you can preventDefault on everything in the DOM, including the body element. This seemed incredibly useless for no other reason than the terrible usability it would bring if you couldn’t scroll the viewport. Then the proverbial light bulb went off: fixed positioning!

First, let’s recap why fixed positioning does not work off-the-bat. Mobile Safari uses a viewport to show you websites. Imagine a book in front of you. Take a piece of paper, cut a 320×416 square in it, and lay it over the book. To read the book, move the paper around and position the hole over the words you want to see. This is exactly what Mobile Safari’s viewport is doing. When you flick and scroll, you’re moving the viewport around while the website behind it stays static.

This renders fixed positioning null and void on iPhone. An element that has its position fixed is affixed to the body, not the viewport. So it is actually working as intended, though most people would prefer it attached to the viewport.”

Check out the rest of the article here, or the source files for the proof-of-concept here.

This integrated web application is a directory of items available for the iPhone. Just this week Steve Jobs expressed his excitement with the more than 60 million downloads since the opening of the store a short few weeks ago.

With millions of targeted devices that span a wide range of end users and a proven ability to distribute applications to those devices, there is a tremendous opportunity for organizations to make a name for themselves. The iPhone presents three opportunities to the world of software development that are ripe for the pickings. The first opportunity is to directly develop applications that run resident on the device. The second opportunity extends the device as a new input medium for web applications. This opportunity allows iPhone users to access their bank accounts, get directions, lookup information on the web….all with the few strokes of a finger. The third opportunity is the blended application. This is where device resident applications leverage the connectivity to back end systems to provide capabilities both on and off the 3G/Wireless network. Blended applications make using the iPhone interesting and convenient for both consumers and businesses.

There have been mobile devices in the market for quite some time now, why is the Apple iPhone different? This is purely my opinion but after using the device for two weeks now it’s one simple element. Human factors. Using the iPhone touch screen and learning simple gestures to navigate vast amounts of information provide a strategic advantage. Everyone knows how to point and touch something. You don’t need to be trained. You don’t need to re-condition your fingers to fit a new style keyboard atop pencil erasers. You just point at what you want, zoom in if you can’t read it, zoom out to get a holistic view - all of this leading to a simple end user experience.

Now back to the business aspect of the iPhone. Blended applications are tremendously powerful and give the iPhone an enterprise appeal as a new way of doing business. The iPhone can actually replace computers or expensive purpose built devices. Let’s take an example of a company that provides all sales reps with a laptop to enable inventory lookup and customer ordering. Both of these are applications that are suitable to the iPhone. Imagine the cost savings of replacing the $1500 notebook computers of all the sales reps of a fortune 500 company with a $199 device that doesn’t require legions of technical support analysts. The iPhone has the ability to shift not only consumer behavior but also the behavior of today’s connected company.

Although the iPhone is an amazing platform for enabling the end user, it seems that Apple has ignored an important factor in the success of the web application angle of their business. If you read the Apple developers site and look at the requirements of registering an application for the Apple App Store, it just says that you must find a host and have your application available via a URL. Basically this means Apple is saying, we gave you the touch point to the customer now it’s up to you to figure out the rest. By turning a blind eye to the environment challenges of a web application, Apple puts the users of web applications at risk. Each web app in the App Store should come with a giant label that says “Buyer Beware”. Because there is no way to know if the company providing that application has the slightest clue on how to run, manage and maintain an environment that may quickly be overloaded by its own success. Most developers can figure out how to download and install an open source technology stack to run a web application. But the challenge comes when that application must be secure and reliable. The challenge then balloons when there is success, requiring investment in not only technology but also the people capable of architecting a solution.

This is where Morph’s Platform as a Service can bridge the gap between the possible and probable. The Morph AppSpace environment is much more than just a “host” for web applications. It’s a true managed service that employs people, process and technology to create an environment that can literally pamper a web application. High availability, load balancing, environment security, system administration, database integrity, continuous backups, real time monitoring are all a standard component of the Morph AppSpace. The application developer no longer needs to concern themselves with all of the headaches and time constraints of building a web application environment. The developer can focus on their application and nearly instantly bring it to market.

In this hyper growth phase of the iPhone phenom, the first movers have the advantage. Blended applications running on the iPhone allow companies to increase their stickiness and make it difficult for competitors to replace them. But waiting for the system administrators to figure out how to get the MySQL database to talk to an app server may close the window of opportunity.

Story By David Abramowski - Source: linux.sys-con.com

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