Standalone web apps on the iPad?

[Mr Skills]

I've just added BBC iPlayer to the iPad home screen and noticed something surprising. When I press the home screen icon, it does not open a new window in Safari. Instead it opens as a 'standalone' app with no title bar.

Obviously some (but not all) web apps/pages can open their own independent instance of Safari after they have been saved to the home screen, instead of just opening a window in 'main' Safari. I've googled but found no mention of this. Can anyone tell me more about this feature? Does it have to be enabled by the developer?

 

[aresinferno]

I've just added BBC iPlayer to the iPad home screen and noticed something surprising. When I press the home screen icon, it does not open a new window in Safari. Instead it opens as a 'standalone' app with no title bar.

Obviously some (but not all) web apps/pages can open their own independent instance of Safari after they have been saved to the home screen, instead of just opening a window in 'main' Safari. I've googled but found no mention of this. Can anyone tell me more about this feature? Does it have to be enabled by the developer?

Standalone web apps have been present on the iPhone for a long time so it makes sense that it has been brought over to the iPad. It is enabled by adding one tag to the code. Any developer can do this and I have no idea why you had no luck on google. Perhaps rather than searching iPad you search iPhone and have more luck. These apps can even be caches and take advantage of local databases to not require an Internet connection to use.

 

[Mr Skills]

Thanks - that makes sense. I had not noticed it before on the iPhone so I was only googling for iPad info.

I have to say it's a great feature. Apple get a lot of flack for locking down the App store, but at the same time they are ensuring that web apps work seriously well.