Apple Making Mobile Safari Web Apps Better, Faster, Stronger

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:39:27 +0000

iPhone web apps aren’t being left behind by Apple, despite the fact that the App Store has gone onto become such a huge success following its introduction in 2008. In fact, according to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, recent efforts on the Mac maker’s part show a real dedication to improving the platform’s web application experience.

In a lengthy post comparing developing using Cocoa Touch for the App Store vs. developing web applications, Gruber goes over the strengths and limitations of both. In the end, he reveals that a new web app framework would bring the experience of using web apps much closer to that of apps which reside natively on the iPhone. The new framework is apparently called PastryKit, and it’s an official Apple endeavor.

PastryKit brings three really important things to the table for web developers:

Hides the address bar, without the need to create a home screen shortcut first, which currently allows that.
Allows for static, fixed position toolbars that don’t scroll along with the rest of the page.
Allows for scrolling momentum, which allows users to “fling” lengthy lists without causing scroll friction, the way web apps generally do now.

PastryKit has already been deployed in its iPhone User Guide web page, though you can only see the effects if you’re visiting the site on an iPhone. They are all JavaScript implementations, and so should be usable by any web developer. MacRumors points out that performance issues attached to the new features could arise on older-generation iPhone models, since these are known to have trouble with JavaScript in mobile Safari.

There’s little doubt that Apple is keeping its eye on the mobile web space, which is poised to explode thanks to recent developments in web tech like HTML5, CSS and others. There are some things that the App Store is no doubt better for, including advanced 3-D games like the kind released by Gameloft, ngmoco and EA, but for other apps, an improved web interface could be just what the doctor ordered.

If Apple can get smaller developers who are creating apps with limited or light functionality to take their business to the web instead of routing through the App Store, it’ll be able to eliminate a lot of the static and chatter that currently gums up the review process and no doubt costs Cupertino a not-insignificant amount of overhead. It may lose revenue, too, but the more lucrative titles will likely remain as dedicated apps, being the aforementioned games from major publishers I mentioned above.

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Two-Finger Scrolling for Pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks

Jenny Kortina — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:00:56 +0000

I was reformatting a Powerbook the other day and after a fresh Leopard install I went to use the two finger scroll function to scroll down a page…but it wasn’t there. I have been using intel based laptops for so long that I just take the two finger scroll feature function and the two finger secondary right click function for granted, and sorely miss them when they’re not available. Luckily, with the help of some third party software the two finger scroll feature and the two finger secondary right click function are easily added to older G4 laptops.

“iScroll2 is a modified trackpad driver that adds two-finger scrolling capabilities to supported pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks on OS X 10.3 and up. Supported models include most aluminum PowerBooks introduced from 2003 to 2004 as well as most G4 iBooks.”

Download iScroll 2 here,and install. After the install and a quick restart iScroll 2 will be an option in your system preferences.

I found that the default settings were way too sensitive, and I couldn’t easily scroll with them. I used the settings like the ones pictured below and they worked well, but I would suggest taking a few minutes to tweak them.

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GigaOM » Apple

Apple Making Mobile Safari Web Apps Better, Faster, Stronger

Two-Finger Scrolling for Pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks