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2010 | Buch

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Beginning iPhone and iPad Web Apps

Scripting with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript

verfasst von: Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Verlag: Apress

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book will help you join the thousands of successful iPhone apps developers without needing to learn Objective-C or the Cocoa touch APIs. If you want to apply your existing web development skills to iPhone and iPad development, then now you can. WebKit’s support for HTML5 means any web developer can create compelling apps for both the iPhone and the larger-screen iPad.

Beginning iPhone & iPad Web Apps takes you through the latest mobile web standards as well as the specific features of the iPhone and iPad. You’ll learn about WebKit and Mobile Safari, HTML5 and CSS3, vector graphics and multimedia support. You’ll discover the built-in hardware features of the iPhone and iPad and how best to take advantage of them.

The market for web apps for the iPhone and iPad is expanding rapidly. You’ll want to know about all the advantages, and Beginning iPhone & iPad Web Apps is the perfect starting point.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Getting Started with Web App Development

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Development Tools

Abstract

Unlike native iPhone application development, web application development doesn’t require a specific integrated development environment (IDE). As long as you have an editor that can save to plain text, you’re OK. Likewise, the primary front-end web developer’s tool, the web browser, exists in all shapes, is well known, and is easily available.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 2. Development Environment

Abstract

You now have tools to create and tools to test. In Chapter 1, we recommended that in order to properly evaluate your application, you should always test it thoroughly on a proper device, whichever it is you are targeting. Likewise, the most reliable way to know how your pages are going to behave on the user’s side is to use them in close to real conditions right from the development process.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 3. Introducing Developer and Debugging Tools

Abstract

It isn’t obvious that developing for the Web would require specific debugging tools or that such tools would even exist. Not so long ago, front-end development was seriously lacking good tools to analyze and debug page components. But the Web has evolved tremendously: front-end debugging tools have flourished, and most major browsers nowadays come with built-in debugging tools or easily added extensions.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Web App Design with HTML5 and CSS3

Frontmatter

Chapter 4. The Anatomy of a Web Application

Abstract

It has been some time now that mobile phones can browse the Internet. Back when Internet access on mobiles devices started, it was nothing like what we know now. Networks had drastically limited speeds and were extremely expensive, screen sizes were small, and devices usually only did black and white. You could read only a few short lines at a time, with a thumbnail-size image if you were lucky. Back then, a web page couldn’t go beyond a bunch of kilobytes, partly because of device memories, and users had the chore of navigating mostly with the 0-9 phone keys. Obviously, even if this was some kind of technical revolution, browsing the Internet on their phones wasn’t very attractive to end users.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 5. User Experience and Interface Guidelines

Abstract

The heart of the previous chapter is not the information about screen dimensions, technical possibilities, or even understanding of how iOS behaves on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Of course, you have to master these aspects to build quality web applications for these devices, but the techniques for doing so are simply tools to succeed in the process. The advice in this book all comes down to the user. The touchinteraction system of Apple’s portable devices establishes a specific relationship between the device and the user that is definitely user-centric. This means that you, the developer, need to seriously consider the design of your applications.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 6. Interesting CSS Features for Your Web Application User Interface

Abstract

HTML5 takes document semantics even further than previous versions of the language. However, if you’ve been a front-end developer for some time, you must be conscious that an appealing design often implies hard dilemmas and superfluous markup. In this chapter, we’ll go through a number of CSS features that are going to make your web application developing process much faster, richer, and cleaner. Some make longawaited enhancements hassle free and easy to maintain, and others are more complex but are going to open a whole new range of layout and design opportunities for your web application on Mobile Safari.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 7. Bitmap and Vector Graphics and Downloadable Fonts with Canvas and SVG

Abstract

The one element of Mobile Safari that has drawn the most attention is that it has no support for Adobe Flash. The Web has become a place where multimedia and animation hold an important role, and while being unable to create Flash-based web sites and casual gaming might not be a problem for most people, the main problem is that Flash is used in some manner on most sites nowadays, be it for graphic animation in headers, advertisements, or videos. Not supporting Flash can be a real issue for the iPhone and iPad user experience when viewing classic web sites.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 8. Embedding Audio and Video Content in Your Web Application

Abstract

As we have stated before, Mobile Safari doesn’t support Flash content. iOS, however, is an extraordinary multimedia platform that inherits the quality of the iPod for audio and video content. That the YouTube application is shipped by default on the OS is symptomatic of the importance given to multimedia both by Apple and by third-party web sites. The number of companies that optimize their sites for the iPhone and the iPad is ever growing, such as Vimeo (as shown on Figure 8-1), where the popular Adobe Flash content is replaced by H.264 videos, the format pushed by Apple. Even YouTube is providing a new mobile version of its web site, surpassing the iPhone built-in native application using the new HTML5 features.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 9. Handling Transformations, Animations, and Special Effects with CSS

Abstract

Desktop Safari has long enabled you to make advanced visual effects directly from the style sheets, and logically Mobile Safari inherits these capabilities. Not only is it possible to apply two- and three-dimensional effects to many elements of your pages, but it is now also possible to precisely define advanced animations to make your web applications visually more lively and attractive—all of this without using a single line of JavaScript or relying on external plug-ins. Again, Flash no longer is a necessity when moving away from still pages. These enhancements are available thanks to the new CSS3 specification, and there are some extra treats from WebKit itself, such as CSS masks.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Going Futher with JavaScript and Web Standards

Frontmatter

Chapter 10. An Object-Oriented JavaScript Programming Primer

Abstract

It is more than likely that, as shown in the previous chapters, you will heavily rely on JavaScript to build your web applications. Over time, client-side scripting has become an ever more crucial tool for developers, with the progress of hardware, the evolution of expectations, and, recently, new APIs that bring the most desirable functionality to web content.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 11. Cross-Document Communication

Abstract

There are many cases where integrating external content into a web page can really make a difference to its richness. It is no secret that the Web isn’t as static as it initially was, and including pieces from other pages, importing raw data, RSS feeds, or so-called widgets has become a norm as found on Netvibes or iGoogle (shown in Figure 11-1), where content and tools from several sources are appropriately brought together in a single page to supply users with a kind of synthesis of their interests.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 12. Ajax and Dynamic Content

Abstract

Although inline frames can be an appropriate way to load external content into your web pages, they are not as flexible as much modern functionality would require. Building web applications, you will generally try to provide a specific answer to some request of the user, so it is likely that you will need to dynamically load external content on actions of the user or resort to server-side scripting to process user input.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 13. Using Touch and Gesture Events

Abstract

The iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, like many portable devices nowadays, uses the finger as the only pointing device. Apple’s devices even support several simultaneous contact points, which, along with a simple, intuitive graphical interface, makes their use fluid, efficient, and overall pleasing for the user. As we have explained in earlier chapters, this entails a close, almost intimate connection between the user and the device. This particular relationship favors realistic designs; for instance, building a poker game application, you can allow your user to virtually “throw” cards on a table with a simple flick of the finger, adding to the real-life impression.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 14. Location-Aware Web Applications

Abstract

The App Store offers a myriad of applications that bring users services based on where they are at some particular moment, such as Where by uLocate, a multilocation-based services aggregator, or Foursquare, which offers a new way to discover your city.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Chapter 15. A Better Handling of Client-Side Data Storage

Abstract

For years, when data needed to be stored on the client to enhance a page or actually allow it to work properly, developers could rely only on cookies. Although this has worked well for various applications, cookies have limitations that make them somewhat unfit for developing complex functionality. Size limits are not a problem when storing an identifier or some information from a session—such as shopping cart data—but they easily become impossible to handle when dealing with more complex tasks, such as calendar synchronization.

Chris Apers, Daniel Paterson

Backmatter

Titel: Beginning iPhone and iPad Web Apps
verfasst von: Chris Apers
Daniel Paterson
Verlag: Apress
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4302-3046-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-4302-3045-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-3046-5