Web Applications for the iPhone
Obviously creating apps for the iPhone has proved immensely successful for a lot of developers.
However with web technologies such as HTML 5, CSS 3 and CSS animations very quickly the lines are being blurred.
Your even able using libraries such as jQtouch which allow you to very quickly create web applications, jQtouch is based on jQuery so if your familiar with that you’ll be off to a good start.
Pro’s for developing web applications
- No need for Apple approval, which is a major pain for a lot of developers
- Ability to upgrade the application and know that your users are using the latest version
- For web developers it means creating apps in the language your comfortable with. PHP, ASP, Python etc.
Con’s for developing web applications
- Restricted access to the iPhone’s hardware, although more and more libraries are giving better/more access to this
- If you wish to charge for your app then you will need to implement your own charging functionality
- You lose the frameworks within Cocoa which make building applications so easy/fun
The future?
I’m currently creating my own web application using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript however I plan on using PhoneGap which allows you to import your web application into xCode and run it as a native application. The benefits of this are pretty massive, mainly giving you easy access to monetize your app through the App Store.
I plan creating some tutorials for iPhone web applications such as:
- jQtouch basics
- Using HTML5 for offline data
- Creating your own animations
- Theme-ing in jQtouch
I’ll post more on my app when it’s nearer launch.
