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iPhone Web Development Guidelines

Consequences

Depending on the popularity and success of the iPhone, these development guidelines could have far reaching consequences.

There are a lot of new web technologies vying for adoption, but none of them really have a hardware device attached to them. JavaFX, Silverlight, and Flash/Flex are the new kids in town, but what will drive adoption of these technologies? Now here comes the iPhone which supports none of these technologies, but has potential to sell in the tens of millions, thus creating it's own market.

Now imagine you have some insanely great technology you want on the iPhone because that's where your target market is, which technology do you use? None of the aforementioned that's for sure.
 
So much for hand held web surfing....

I thought I was going to be holding OSX and Safari in the palm of my hand - based on these limitations iPhone won't even be close to true web surfing with a real browser. Ouch! :(
 
Very informative. Its a serious drag that there's no flash or java support, although I suspect that is coming soon because of the amount of people angry over that.

I also thought about Apple TV's youtube feature. Since videos for that will be H.264, I wonder if this integration is also coming to iPhone (apple specifically mentions H.264 support here).

Good to know Google Maps Integration is there, as well as PDF support and quicktime embedded videos.
 
sieken said:
Is there anyone with me who is also extremely sick of hearing about the iPhone? Isn't there anything else to talk about? I know people are excited and all, but c'mon... please?
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Finally !!! I'm so sick of the iPhone. I was hooked 6 months ago, now they lost me. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table. Interesting features, but all lacking in one aspect or another...

Can't wait for their next gadget, cause Mac don't seem to be their main business anymore.
 
This is no watered down version of the internet...

Sorry apple but it is a watered down version of the internet - albiet a lot less watered down then the competition.

5 seconds for Javascript isn't so bad as the vast majority is for menus and the like - they will run fine in the 5 secomd time frame.

But no flash - man that dilutes things seriously. I wonder if the reason apple left it out has to do with processing flash files - with recent versions of flash being very processor intensive.

Might not be able to be hacked - Adobe might need to write a custom plugin for the iphone or we might need to wait till the next version of the iphone with a more capable processor.
 
I hope that the purpose of Apple's "design considerations" is how to optimize the use of a website on an iPhone, rather than how to make the site work at all.
 
my moto q and pretty much any other ms smartphone does this
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....then continue to use your "smart" phone. I've tried several of these "smart" phones (Palm OS and Windows Mobile) and I think they suck.
 
citi said:
That's a load of crap, my moto q and pretty much any other ms smartphone does this. Plus, we still don't know how the keyboard is going to work out, and if will it last, like say if I drop my phone. My ipod is durable, but will this one be?

Bottom line is apple will do what they always do...release this and then 6 months later, release the one that everyone wants.
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SO WHAT DO YOU CARE STICK WITH YOUR MOTO.... BLA BLA.... Who cares.

No 3G -----------------I DON'T CARE
No java -----------------I DON'T CARE
No Flash ----------------I DON'T CARE
4 or 8 gb max storage ---I DON'T CARE
no external memory -----I DON'T CARE

Did I say I don't care because I'm getting One!!
 
Does quicktime still support earlier implementations of flash? I remember that quicktime supported the flash features in ver. 3 or 4. You could actually open a .swf file and quicktime supported the movie/button features.

The web design requirements are almost the same for the internet in general before 2000ish. We tried not to use a lot of frames, were concerned about bandwidth, and small computer screens.

I LIKE IT- I think too much junk gets in the way of conveying information on the internet. I love flash, and do a lot of flash design - but sites are using flash for the sake of using flash - not to convey information in a simple and effective way.
 
I'm not sick of reading about the iPhone :) (But if I was, I would.... just not read about the iPhone! MacRumors is very diligent about identifying when a story relates to iPhone, so you can not read or comment on those if you don't want to.)

Has Apple released the syntax for a call link in an HTML page? I'd like to make a page that calls me, for iPhone users.
 
Counter said:
99% of pages on the net which use javascript (even extensively) need no more than a second. Javascript is mainly used for things which happen instantly. Animations with Javascript are POOP. It's not like the iPhone has a replacement for displaying animations (Flash, Java) but hey, this is rev A.
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Javascript can do animations very well. It depends what kind of animations you are talking about, though. Javascript very commonly does sliding, shrinking, growing, etc. animations. It is used very heavily on the web for this. These animations still take less than (most likely) a tenth of a second to actually do their work; they are simply repeated over and over again to cause what looks like an animation. For example, here is a rough outline of what might be done with javascript:
HTML: 
<div id="myShape">some text</div>
<script type = "text/javascript">
    function animateSome(){
        myShape.style.height += 30;  //add a bit to myShape's height
    }
window.setInterval(aniamteSome, 100);
</script>

Note that the above code probably won't actually work, it is only meant as a demonstration, and I took some shortcuts. What it will do is call "animateSome" every 100 milliseconds (every tenth of a second). Each time animateSome is called, it will increase the height of myShape a bit.

Each increase of the height will probably take a millisecond or less itself, and thus comes nowhere close to the 5sec time limit. The 5 second limit almost certainly means 5 consecutive seconds, which means that even if the above script ran forever, it would never ever surpass that 5 second limit. In other words, even if a javascript animation ran for an entire hour, as long as each step of the animation took less than five seconds to complete, it would run fine on the iPhone's Safari. In most circumstances, if the script executes for more than 5 seconds, there is a problem with the script.

Now, the question is, how fast/slow is the Javascript on the iPhone's Safari? Because, if it is 1/10th the speed of the regular Safari (not likely that it would be THAT slow), then 5 seconds of time on the iPhone would be equivalent to only .5 seconds of time on the desktop, which begins to look like too small an amount of time.

mtrctyjoe said:
I thought I was going to be holding OSX and Safari in the palm of my hand - based on these limitations iPhone won't even be close to true web surfing with a real browser. Ouch! :(
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What limitations? The only real big ones I see are the lack of Flash and... well, actually, the lack of Java doesn't actually seem that big.
 
artalliance said:
you are aware that this is way more than any current phone out there, right?
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So because it offers a little more than other phones, it makes it a great product ? For a product that was advertised as the iPhone, there are a lot of expectations. People are realizing that it's not exactly what was promised.

It may offer up to 8Gb's of storage, but for video, photos, music + phone, it's far from enough. Then, there's battery life for all of this. I use my iPod all the time, the battery dies very quickly now, imagine how frustrating it will be when your iPhone dies every 2 hours. t won't be as much fun. This thing seems to consume more power than your standard Nano.

On top of that, they talk about a phone running OS X, but that phone needs to be synced through iTunes. No .mac integration, no OS cross functionality. It's basically an AppleTV with a smaller HD and an integrated phone.
 
nostaws said:
I LIKE IT- I think too much junk gets in the way of conveying information on the internet. I love flash, and do a lot of flash design - but sites are using flash for the sake of using flash - not to convey information in a simple and effective way.
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I definitely disagree with this. Flash is used extensively for interface and navigation - its not fluff. It is also used for delivering essential content, video and animation. It plays a central role for informing and entertaining not to mention the importance of overall user experience - where html completely sucks.
 
Hunabku said:
I definitely disagree with this. Flash is used extensively for interface and navigation - its not fluff. It is also used for delivering essential content, video and animation. It plays a central role for informing and entertaining not to mention the importance of overall user experience - where html completely sucks.
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But in theory, all websites should offer "graceful degradation" to a method that does not use Flash. Or, in other schools of thought, websites should start at a more normal form than Flash, and then offer a bit of enhancement for browsers that support Flash.
 
No Flash and Java ? Great for battery life and overall performance!

badly written Flash or Java sucks up all you processor power, never noticed the fans of your MacBook(pro) turning on during an intese Flash or Java viewing experience because your MB is starting to boil due to intense CPU?

5 sec Javascript is, like said before, enough for 99% off all javascripts used.
 
mrpiddly said:
NO FLASH/JAVA!!!!!!!!!
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My guess (this is my default guess for all iPhone limitations :) ) is that AT&T's hand migh be at work here. Flash is more than just videos -- it is a moderate development environment (look at all the Flash-based games). Java is of course a development environment. If the iPhone allowed Flash or Java, it would mean you could download applications on your phone -- something that apparently isn't allowed.

When RIM tried to ship free games pre-installed on its Blackberry, AT&T stopped them, forcing RIM to sell the games through AT&T's online store (for which AT&T got a cut). There are numerous other similar examples.

Also, don't forget, AT&T is strongly against Net Neutrality. They want to control everything you do, and take a cut in the process.

The true iPhone will be one without a wireless carrier and only WiFi (with VOIP), and it will allow us to install our own applications on it, and it will come with an SDK. It will probably be called an iPod.
 
cloudnine said:
With the fear of sounding like a complete moron, what in the quoted material states that flash will not be available?
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"No flash and No Java of course this means no Microsoft Silverlight"

arn
 
There's stuff on all these sites saying "yes, flash" and "no flash" and back and forth, etc, etc... but i don't believe we've actually seen confirmation from apple saying one way or the other... or am i wrong?
 
sites are using flash for the sake of using flash - not to convey information in a simple and effective way.
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I definitely disagree with this. Flash is used extensively for interface and navigation - its not fluff. It is also used for delivering essential content, video and animation. It plays a central role for informing and entertaining not to mention the importance of overall user experience - where html completely sucks.
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Let me clarify - I agree that flash is great for a lot of things. I personally do a lot of work using flash. Some of that I would not consider "fluff." (although a lot is - as per client instructions)

However, I think non-internet fluff = 20% versus internet fluff=80%
 
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