Category ArchiveiPhone
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.
