iPhone 12 Jul 2007 02:54 pm
Want to build web pages optimized for the iPhone?
Check out this new iPhone JavaScript library, iUI, by Joe Hewitt. The team at Digg has already put this into practice, releasing a beta of an iPhone-optimized version of digg.com. You can view this at digg.com/iphone. If you don’t have an iPhone but want to get a virtual iPhone browsing experience, download iPhoney (mac only).
iUI is about more than just visuals, it aims to make web apps as usable as Apple’s own. One usability problem I kept witnessing in early iPhone web apps was a lack of support for the back button. While using these apps I often found myself hitting back and being sent two or three “pages” backwards. The reason is that most apps are using single-page navigation, which skirts the browser’s own history. The single-page model is the right way to go, but it is imperative that the back button still works, because if I’m going to wait 3 minutes to load a page over EDGE and then have to load it again because the back button accidentally sent me away from your site, I’m not going to be happy.
That’s why I think the best feature of iUI is that it makes single-page navigation usable. It keeps the back and forward buttons working and optionally inserts a captioned back button into your app’s toolbar. It slides smoothly between pages (at least as smoothly as Safari can go, which is about 1/10th as smooth as native apps) instead of the unpleasant flicker and jumpiness that accompanies a fresh page load.
on 13 Jul 2007 at 1:57 am 1.Flash Prayer said …
Nice app. I am waiting to get my hands on a iphone just to see it for real. Looks like a very cool phone…
on 16 Jul 2007 at 10:45 pm 2.Brian Kurzius said …
Hi Mike,
In order to keep working with AIR in the Flexbuilder 3 beta I decided to buy FlexBuilder 2 when the demo expired last week. But it just occurred to me that as a result I’ll need to purchase the upgrade too once FlexBuilder 3 moves out of beta. So I would like to recommend that Adobe offer a free upgrade all new buyers to FlexBuilder 3 –provided they purchased Flexbuilder 2 after the Beta was released. I think you’ll find that this offers a greater incentive to developers to try the product out beyond the 30 demo expiration period.
on 17 Jul 2007 at 11:49 pm 3.thinman said …
Aptana has a nice plugin for making iPhone-centric ajax apps.
on 19 Jul 2007 at 4:22 am 4.admin said …
@Brian: makes sense to me. I’ll suggest it to the product team. As a former product manager, however, I know how complicated it can be to do things like that (revenue recognition issues, policy issues, etc).
on 30 Oct 2007 at 10:30 pm 5.fmsxsqaf said …
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on 30 Nov 2007 at 8:50 am 6.Bayanlara Ozel Ne Varsa...! said …
I am waiting to get my hands on a iphone just to see it for real. Looks like a very cool phone…
on 18 Mar 2008 at 3:27 am 7.Floroskop said …
Hello!
I think this try.