Web Apps

I started playing with iPhone/iTouch/iPad "web apps" just last week.

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/navigation/ 
index.html#section=Resource%20Types&topic=Coding%20How-Tos

Apple has made it incredibly easy to create a web app that runs exactly  
like a native app on these devices.

Of course, perl is a perfect server side language to power these apps,  
and BBEdit and Perl on a Mac make the perfect IDE to create these web  
apps.

While poking around there I also found out that Safari on the Mac OS  
also provides some big enhancements for web based apps now too. Check  
this out:

"Safari on iPhone, Mac OS X, and Windows all implement the Offline Web  
Applications feature of HTML5. This feature allows you to cache all of  
the resource files for your web application on the client, improving  
the load time of your application and making it possible to create an  
application which is fully functional even when there is no network  
connection."

(source:  
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/codinghowtos/Desktop/ 
DataManagement/index.html)

This is actually fulfilling a vision I expressed right here waaay back  
in 2005:

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08946.html

Geez, It's like they've been working all this time for me entirely for  
free ;)

Seriously, according to the news this week it now looks like most all  
"Smart Phone" makers will adapt a similar, if not the same, approach to  
web based apps that run on these devices.

Think about it, Apple knows that laptops and desktops need to be able  
to run these same applications because it provides a fast and  
inexpensive way for developers to integrate the use of these  
applications with these different devices. Users want that, and they  
want them to "Feel" like a native application too. Apple is essentially  
giving them that.

So, looking forward it's easy to imagine that many "Native" apps will  
really be "Web Apps". The client side will contain the necessary tools  
to run them. Updates and upgrades happen "at the atomic level" on the  
server side and are instant and seamless and distributed as soon as the  
software is accessed. (that's something I learned right here ;)

The advantages to developers both small and large are huge. I now  
believe this is exactly where Apple is heading and as you can imagine,  
I'm absolutely thrilled about it :)

--

Bill Stephenson