Beginning IOS Application Development with HTML and JavaScript

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.