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Apple Laying Groundwork for Advanced Mobile Web Apps?

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Apr 12, 2001
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It seems Apple is continuing to invest in advancing web-based technologies to provide a more full feature experienced on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Daring Fireball's John Gruber describes in detail an impressive web framework called PastryKit that was developed by Apple and deployed in their iPhone User Guide web page (when viewed from an iPhone). (Video demonstration)

The article is somewhat technical for casual readers, but essentially, Apple has implemented a few key interface features in Javascript that could make web-apps feel much more like native iPhone apps. These include:

- Completely hiding the address bar
- Allowing for fixed-position toolbars that don't move when you scroll
- Allows for scrolling with momentum so you can quickly scroll long lists

Any iPhone web apps you might have used before have likely demonstrated the same fixed scrolling speed inherent in mobile Safari, and were unable to keep a dedicated toolbar at the top or bottom of the pages. These small changes go a long way towards making web apps feel more natural on the iPhone.

Since these features have been implemented by Apple in Javascript, they could be available to any web developer. Despite big strides in Javascript performance in mobile Safari, however, the performance of their framework still lags on older generation devices.

In the future, it seems likely that we'll see more and more functionality move to the mobile web. In fact, Google Engineering vice president predicted that the mobile web would become the dominant mobile application development platform of the future, despite Apple's massive success with the App Store. Indeed, over the past year we've seen advancements in HTML5/CSS which include support for CSS animations, OpenGL 2.0/WebGL, accelerometers, and even GPS support.

As these technologies become more common and iPhones continue to become faster, it's easy to see how the future web applications could replace some of the current native App Store apps.

Article Link: Apple Laying Groundwork for Advanced Mobile Web Apps?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/16/apple-laying-groundwork-for-advanced-mobile-web-apps/
Problem is that PastryKit isn't a public framework at the moment... It would be nice if Apple opened it up or if someone else could re-implement some of the useful bits of the code but until this is an officially sanctioned development framework, using it will always be a bit of a hack...
 
I can confirm that the user guide has behaved like this since at least the release of OS 3.0. I remember checking it out and thinking "Wow, that's neat how much this seems like a native app once you place it on your home screen."

I would say I'm surprised at how long it took nerds to notice, but then again, how often do nerds look at introductory user guides?
 
heh, they've been saying that mobiles are the future of the web for bloody years now.

Until the speed of web apps = the speed of dedicated apps, i'm out
 
Michael Belisle said:
I can confirm that the user guide has behaved like this since at least the release of OS 3.0. I remember checking it out and thinking "Wow, that's neat how much this seems like a native app once you place it on your home screen."

I would say I'm surprised at how long it took nerds to notice, but then again, how often do nerds look at introductory user guides?
Click to expand...

check dashcode, there is a template for that, it even allows safari/mobile safari separation, offline apps, ...
People often complain that iWeb sucks and is not flexible, and it seems no one really looks at Dashcode which also comes for free, it got pretty nice since it first appearance.

I just say: MVC, Bindings, rich editor, ...
 
The ability to grab the scrollbar on the right side of the screen (like a real computer) could be very helpful for long webpages. Right now, it can take 20 seconds to scroll down to the bottom of a webpage. BUT THAT WOULD CONSUME VALUABLE SCREEN SPACE. What would be much better (take our your iPhone right now and test this to see what I'm talking about) is when you are at the top or middle of a webpage and you want to scroll down or up, if you flick REALLY FAST, it should scroll really far. Right now it slows down way to soon if you flick REALLY FAST.
 
Superdelphinus said:
heh, they've been saying that mobiles are the future of the web for bloody years now.

Until the speed of web apps = the speed of dedicated apps, i'm out
Click to expand...

Here here. Me too.

I really don't get this web stuff.

So, ever since the iPhone came out, people were waiting for native apps. Now they are here, people want more advanced web apps?

How can the web ever be as good or fast as a natively compiled and run application and why would you want it? What advantages does it have?

I'm yet to be convinced that Google's "everything's a web browser" vision will ever be totally true. I have yet to see any web application - on any platform - be without annoying lag of some description or without being somehow constrained by the 'one-size-fits-all' constraints of the web. That includes Google's own mail interface and - well - the MobileMe interface is just shocking.

Why? Why?
 
I've never been a fan of web apps, so you can imagine I'm not to thrilled about this. I personally prefer the speed and reliability of a native app. No matter if its on my phone, or on my computer, I want my apps to be independent of a web browser (which is just another app) and not rely on the availability of an internet connection or the reliability of a server to function. If this come about I may play around with it just to see what its about but I know I will not be using web apps seriously.
 
ghall said:
No matter if its on my phone, or on my computer, I want my apps to be independent of a web browser (which is just another app) and not rely on the availability of an internet connection or the reliability of a server to function.
Click to expand...

fwiw, in this case, the web app described is not dependent on an internet connection. It stores everything to a local database.

See the linked video.

arn
 
arn said:
fwiw, in this case, the web app described is not dependent on an internet connection. It stores everything to a local database.

See the linked video.

arn
Click to expand...

Oh whoops I missed that, thanks for pointing that out. Still, I'm with johnnyjibbs on this one.
 
Appleinsider Iphone page

Is this what they use to make the main controls stay where they are on the Apple Insider iPhone website? Very elegant solution (Controls fade away when scrolling, but fade in, adhered to bottom of screen when you stop scrolling.)
 
johnnyjibbs said:
Here here. Me too.

I really don't get this web stuff.

So, ever since the iPhone came out, people were waiting for native apps. Now they are here, people want more advanced web apps?

How can the web ever be as good or fast as a natively compiled and run application and why would you want it? What advantages does it have?

I'm yet to be convinced that Google's "everything's a web browser" vision will ever be totally true. I have yet to see any web application - on any platform - be without annoying lag of some description or without being somehow constrained by the 'one-size-fits-all' constraints of the web. That includes Google's own mail interface and - well - the MobileMe interface is just shocking.

Why? Why?
Click to expand...

Apple provides native apps for the MobileMe functionality, so i think that is quite ok (as long as the user has an iPhone, but i guess thats what they wanna anyway)
 
Just make Safari, to have 2 tabs open, and store the pages. i hate waiting for it to reload when i move betweeen them. And The 3GS probally doesn't have this issue, but the 3G and original do. The 3G is still selling, so Apple needs to make it run properly.
 
johnnyjibbs said:
So, ever since the iPhone came out, people were waiting for native apps. Now they are here, people want more advanced web apps?
Click to expand...

Because they don't like the current App Store situation? Because not all native apps are approved?

By releasing a web app you don't have to go through the whole App Store process, there's no control of content, there's no waiting for review, there's no uncertainty, you don't have to pay a yearly fee to Apple etc.
 
no

i personally don't like native webapps for sites. i lose consistency and it feels like a different site altogether. there are reasons i go to certain sites and one of those reasons is the layout ie how the page fits together, so its annoying when i have to deal with a mobile version
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

This is what AI have: iphone.appleinsider.com but somewhat similar?
 
Address bar is there all along

Quite smooth. The only thing which is inconsistent with normal apps is that the feature to get to the top of a page (by tapping on the top bar) doesn't work.

Doing that will allow you to access the address bar, which works charmingly. Although the ability to get to the top page is something I'd miss.

http://bit.ly/6WdlXG
 
johnnyjibbs said:
So, ever since the iPhone came out, people were waiting for native apps. Now they are here, people want more advanced web apps?
Click to expand...

The people don't want web apps. Google wants them. The people couldn't care less if something is a web app or a native app as long as it works well.
 
The Transmission web app also takes advantage of this. Activate the Web server in Transmission and visit it through your iPhone. Then save this down as a bookmark on your home page and visit it. It completely removes the address bar as well as the bar at the bottom with the back/forward/add buttons.

This is certainly the way forward for webapps as it allows for the developer to instantly change the layout, content and all other aspects of the app without having to issue an update and for users to download the update through the App Store. of course its not going to work for games and such, but can certainly see the use in many other categories of apps..
 
MacRumors said:
As these technologies become more common and iPhones continue to become faster, it's easy to see how the future web applications could replace some of the current native App Store apps.
Click to expand...

Yes, SOME native apps. Mostly those that simply provide a better mobile interface to a website (Facebook, ebay, IMDB etc)

Looking at how slow it progressed in the past, I don't see how HTML/Javascript development and standardization could keep up with advances in the iPhone hardware. If you want to make full use of the device, you'll need native apps a long, long way down the road.
Bring up the discussion again in 5 years.
 
Aetles said:
Because they don't like the current App Store situation? Because not all native apps are approved?

By releasing a web app you don't have to go through the whole App Store process, there's no control of content, there's no waiting for review, there's no uncertainty, you don't have to pay a yearly fee to Apple etc.
Click to expand...

These are for sure valid points.
And yet there are like 100.000 apps and everyone goes crazy about them (users and developers alike)
 
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