Book description
This book covers the various aspects of developing web-based
applications for iOS. Over the past four years, the iPhone and iPad
have been amazingly successful. Because of this success, application
developers are entering a world of sophisticated, multifunctional
mobile applications. Now mobile web-based applications can bring
together web apps, native apps, multimedia video and audio, and the
mobile device itself. By using this book you will learn how to create
a mobile application from beginning to end, utilizing open source
frameworks to speed up development times, emulate the look and feel of
built-in Apple applications, capture finger touch interactions, and
optimize applications for Wi-Fi and wireless networks.
The book introduces you to the web application platform for iOS. It
also guides you through the process of building new applications from
scratch as well as migrating existing web applications to this new
mobile platform. By doing this, the book helps readers design a user
interface that is optimized for iOS touch-screen displays and
integrate their applications with iPhone services, including Phone,
Mail, Google Maps, and GPS.
This book is aimed at beginning and intermediate web developers who
want to learn how to build new applications for iOS or migrate
existing web apps to this platform. In general, you will find it
helpful if you have a working knowledge of these technologies:
- HTML/XHTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- Ajax
If you are less experienced working with these technologies, the
early chapters of the book will help you.
Chapter 1 introduces iOS development using web technologies by
exploring the Safari web development platform. Chapter 2 focuses on
working with core technologies. Chapter 3 explains the Document Object
Model. Chapter 4 guides you through writing your first iOS app.
Chapter 5 covers how to make an existing website compatible with
mobile versions of Safari and how to optimize the site for use as a
web application. Chapter 6 gives an overview of the key design
concepts and principles that will be used when developing a usable
interface on the iPhone and iPod touch. Chapter 7 looks at how to
design UI's for the iPad and describes how they differ from the iPhone
designs. Chapter 8 discusses styling with CSS as well as discussing
Safari-specific styles that are useful when developing web apps for
iOS. Chapter 9 proves a code-level look at developing an iPhone and
iPad web application interface. Chapter 10 is about handling touch
interactions and events as well as how to capture JavaScript events.
Chapter 11 is about special effects and animation based off of the
Safari canvas. Chapter 12 discusses how a web application can
integrate with core services including Phone, Mail, Google Maps, and
GPS. Chapter 13 explains how you can use two little used web
technologies (bookmarklets and URLS) to support limited offline
support. Chapter 14 dives into the advanced techniques that go along
with the mobile version of Safari that supports canvas drawing and
painting. Chapter 15 covers how you can use HTML 5 offline to create
local web apps that don't need a live server connection. Chapter 16
highlights the major open source iPhone app frameworks and shows you
how to be productive with each of them. Chapter 17 deals with the
issue of performance of web-based applications and what techniques you
can do to minimize constraints while maximizing bandwidth and app
execution performance. Chapter 18 discusses various methods of
debugging Safari web applications. Chapter 19 walks you through all of
the steps you need to join the Apple Developer Program and obtain
necessary credentials for publishing to the App Store. Chapter 20
explores migration strategies and shows you how to take your Web app
and wrap it inside of a native iOS shell. Chapter 21 wraps up the book
by showing you how to take your app and submit it to the App Store for
public distribution.
Richard Wagner is the Lead Product Architect of Mobile/Web at Maark,
LLC. Before that he was the head of engineering for the Web scripting
company Nombas and VP of Product Development for NetObjects where he
was the chief architect of a CNET award-winning JavaScript tool named
NetObjects ScriptBuilder. Richard is an experienced web designer and
developer, as well as the author of several Web-related books on the
technologies of the iOS platform.
Richard Wagner
is Lead Product Architect of Mobile/Web at Maark, LLC. He is an
experienced web designer and developer and the author of several
web-related books on the underlying technologies of the iPhone
application platform.
