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iPhone Web Development Guidelines

Can ya'll name some flash sites that I might visit to see what I'm going to be missing?

Also, did I I read correctly that we'll be able to play embedded quicktime videos? That's cool. :cool:
 
Being an "old" web designer. Pre-Web 2.0 etc..

Why would any web page be more than 10 MB ?? That seems a bit large for a page.

But who knows in this day and age.
 
JavaScript and SVG support mean that it would not be really difficult to create online games for the iPhone.

Tetris wil probably work straight away. And what more could you possibly want? :D
 
iPhone rainbow ball of death?

When the iPhone hangs because a Javascript is taking over 5 seconds, will rainbow ball of death appear on the screen and the touch screen becomes inactive?
 
No Flash is a BIG disappointment... but I suspect a temporary one, and probably involving Adobe. It would need a Flash player written for OS X on ARM (iPhone uses neither PPC nor Intel) and that may simply not exist yet.

BornAgainMac said:
When the iPhone hangs because a Javascript is taking over 5 seconds, will rainbow ball of death appear on the screen and the touch screen becomes inactive?
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The 5 second limit would PREVENT such a freeze, not cause it.

cloudnine said:
Speaking of games... I'm assuming that none of the 5th generation ipod games will work with the iphone? hrm...
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There were hints (in iTunes maybe? I forget) about an iPod-game "emulator" of sorts for iPhone. But with the need to emulate controls that are often ALREADY emulating other controls (e.g. Pac-Mac), and with the screen being a different size/shape/res, it would probably be a poor experience. Thus I don't expect Apple to go through with it.
 
I don't get why people are freaking out over Flash.

I mean, I have flashblock on almost all the time and only allow sites like youtube to run flash without me actively allowing it.

And the trade off? I see less annoying ads then when I didn't install flashblock.

So with the iPhone it saves me the trouble. :D
 
BornAgainMac said:
When the iPhone hangs because a Javascript is taking over 5 seconds, will rainbow ball of death appear on the screen and the touch screen becomes inactive?
Click to expand...

That raises another question that I haven't heard much about. What kind of performance can we expect from the iphone? Do we know for certain the processor it is using?

Yes the iPhone "seems" to render straight html acceptably - but as we know sites have become much more than that.
 
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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Then don't waste your time posting here... there are some many discussions here... or better yet... spend some time away from MR until the iPhone frenzy calms down. That will help your sanity. I don't get people like you. You bother reading and posting then just vent away... makes no sense to me. I'm not interested in buying a mac pro, so I don't go there!!
 
Oogami said:
I don't get why people are freaking out over Flash.

I mean, I have flashblock on almost all the time and only allow sites like youtube to run flash without me actively allowing it.

And the trade off? I see less annoying ads then when I didn't install flashblock.

So with the iPhone it saves me the trouble. :D
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Keep in mind also.YouTube is transitioning to mpeg-4 video to be available for the :apple: TV. ;)
 
artalliance said:
you are aware that this is way more than any current phone out there, right?
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Certainly a LOT more storage than Nokia's latest uber-complicated $1100 monster:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05/01/review_nokia_n95/print.html

160 MB--expandable to only 2GB--on a phone that costs far more than an iPhone (even at discounted street prices), is nearly twice as thick, has a tiny screen with no touch-based UI, lacks anything approaching iPhone's Safari... and gets half the talk time :eek: I like the GPS... except the Nokia also lacks WiFi and Bluetooth which I like even more.

Just to put the iPhone in the context of much "higher-end" competitors :)


Hunabku said:
That raises another question that I haven't heard much about. What kind of performance can we expect from the iphone? Do we know for certain the processor it is using?

Yes the iPhone "seems" to render straight html acceptably - but as we know sites have become much more than that.
Click to expand...

I've read reports that the processor is ARM (which is why regular Mac apps would never run without a recompile) but I have never found any solid confirmation. (You'd think OS X being ported to a THIRD processor architecture would get more notice.)

As for rendering: it's Safari. Plug-ins like Flash aside, Safari/WebKit is doing the rendering, so we do know that complex pages render well.
 
cloudnine said:
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?
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There's been very few claims that Flash will be on the iPhone. I think there was one when the iPhone first came out, and ever since then it's been "no flash."

And based on a number of reports (including this one), Apple flat-out said "no flash" on the iPhone during WWDC.

arn
 
CoreWeb said:
Most likely an Ajax request will use an asynchronous request, meaning that Javascript will not actually be running while waiting for content to download from the server. Instead, when the data is retrieved Safari would call a Javascript function. Even if it was a synchronous request, Safari might consider the "halted" javascript to not actually be running, meaning the 5 second limit would not apply.
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If it's not Asynchronous, it's not AJAX.
 
CoreWeb said:
For comparison purposes, the default limit on desktop Firefox is 10 seconds, I believe. And I'm pretty sure this is consecutive time, not total time. It is simply to prevent crashes if the Javascript gets stuck in an infinite loop.

Edit: In addition, based off what I've read in my short Google search on Firefox's timeout, it was once 5 seconds. (But now the default is 10). The difference between Firefox and the iPhone browser will most likely be that in Firefox this setting is customizable (but you have to go to about:config and change it manually) and Firefox doesn't simply halt the script, but shows a dialog telling the user that a script is running to slow and asking whether to stop it or not. If the user decides not to stop it, and it is an endless loop, Firefox would (this is an educated guess) hang. As Apple wants the iPhone to be stable, they don't want to give the user a choice to do something which has a potential to crash the system.
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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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ahh thanks. I just got into web programming using the iphone as my excuse.
 
Interesting. The H.264 format on the iPhone is higher quality (3.0 opposed to LC) than the iPod. Very nice.
 
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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I suggest you download the Safari 3 beta (if you haven't already) and run it with plug-ins turned OFF and Javascript ON. This will give you a good approximation of what the iPhone's browsing experience will be like.
 
arn said:
There's been very few claims that Flash will be on the iPhone. I think there was one when the iPhone first came out, and ever since then it's been "no flash."

And based on a number of reports (including this one), Apple flat-out said "no flash" on the iPhone during WWDC.

arn
Click to expand...

aah... i missed that one :( well that stinks...
 
Interestingly enough Quicktime has Flash 7 built into it. However it's slow through a quicktime object. Wonder if they crippled quicktime.

Either way quite a bit can be done through quicktime for A/V and there are plenty of PURE ajax based video/audio players.

The 5 Seconds is the time the entire script takes to execute, which is MORE than enough. If your ajax takes longer than 5 seconds, you have some serious issues.

Even if you wrote 10 pages of PURE javascript then clicked "execute" it would be done before 5 seconds. So don't worry.
 
The person will need to put two javascript buttons on the side of that game, that do the same thing as the arrow keys.

Morris said:
JavaScript and SVG support mean that it would not be really difficult to create online games for the iPhone.

Tetris wil probably work straight away. And what more could you possibly want? :D
Click to expand...
 
rjlawrencejr said:
I suggest you download the Safari 3 beta (if you haven't already) and run it with plug-ins turned OFF and Javascript ON. This will give you a good approximation of what the iPhone's browsing experience will be like.
Click to expand...

I've been running Safari on my iMac for over a week with Flash disabled, Javascript enabled, and I haven't noticed the difference :confused: Seriously.

ETA: Actually, I get the Safari blue cube icon with a question mark when I have flash enabled. Does that make sense?
 
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