Wiley Safari and WebKit Development for iPhone OS 3.0 978-0-470-54966-7 User Manual

Introducing Safari/WebKit 

Development for iPhone 3.0

The introduction of the iPhone and the subsequent unveiling of the iPod touch have revolution-
ized the way people interact with handheld devices. No longer do users have to use a keypad for 
screen navigation or browse the Web through “dumbed down” pages. These mobile devices have 
brought touch screen input, a revolutionary interface design, and a fully functional Web browser 
right into the palms of people’s hands. 

Seeing the platform’s potential, all the segments of the developer community jumped on board. 
Although native applications may receive most of the attention, you can still create apps for 
iPhone without writing a single line of Objective-C, the programming language used to develop 
native iPhone apps. In fact, iPhone’s WebKit-based browser provides a compelling application 
development platform for Web developers who want to create custom apps for iPhone using 
familiar Web technologies. 

Each subsequent release of the iPhone OS and Safari on iPhone has put increased power into the 
hands of Web developers, and as I’ll discuss shortly, the iPhone OS 3.0 release is no exception. 

Discovering the Safari/ WebKit Platform

An iPhone Web application runs inside of the built-in Safari browser that is based on Web stan-
dards, including these:

HTML/XHTML (HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.9, XHTML mobile profi le document types)

 

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CSS (CSS 2.1 and partial CSS3)

 

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