The Apple iPhone, since its initial introduction in July 2007, has become the fastest selling smartphone in the 18 months of its existence. A key factor in its success is its powerful Safari Web browser that allows users to view virtually any page on the Web, with full support of JavaScript and AJAX features typically found on desktop browser only. An excellent Oracle article focus on using Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Mobile to develop a mobile Web application optimized for the iPhone. That’s creating a web page, not an iPhone application (big difference…).
Designing a Web application varies greatly for a mobile user who accesses the Web using the 3.5-inch iPhone screen, versus for a sedentary user access the Web using a 22-inch LCD monitor. This offers an interesting challenge to Web developers, since Web development tools on the market today fit into one of these two categories:
- Tools that target the desktop Web browser: These tools fully leverage the AJAX/JavaScript capabilities offered by these desktop browsers. They also focus on developing user interface intended for screen size of 17-inch or resolution of 1024X768 or larger.
- Tools that target the HTML mobile Web browser: These tools focus on delivering user interfaces to the small (240X320) screen. They also use a least common denominator approach in delivering a basic HTML content to all mobile browsers.
These two tools translate into Web sites that either deliver a sub-optimal user interface and large page download, or plain HTML pages that do not leverage any advanced AJAX features that Safari browser supports.
The Oracle ADF Mobile Browser client, however, enables developers to leverage the AJAX capabilities of the iPhone Safari browser, while maintain complete compatibility with mobile browsers that can only handle plain HTML or WAP 2.0 contents. Furthermore, it helps developers create user interfaces that are optimized for iPhone screen size and mobile Web use.
All details are available on http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/huang-iphone.html.
The following resources will help to get started on iPhone development using ADF and JDeveloper today:
- ADF Mobile Tutorial: “Creating a Mobile Browser-friendly ADF Application”
- Sample ADF Mobile Application Project: This project is based on ADF Mobile tutorial. You can run this project once you have deployed Fusion Order Demo schema to a database, as instructed in the ADF Mobile Tutorial.
- ADF Mobile Demo Site: Navigate to this site on the iPhone to see the application in action. The sample code in this article are taken from an application developed for Oracle OpenWorld 2008.
- Oracle ADF Mobile Developer Guide
- Oracle JDeveloper & ADF Discussion Forum
- Apache MyFaces Trinidad Project: All of the mobile rendering support is provided by Trinidad components. For additional details and techniques around using Trinidad components, please visit the project Website.
To develop iPhone application, actually, the best training for getting started with iPhone development comes straight from Apple. They have a huge video training library. The videos are extremely well thought-out and, though obviously narrated by the geekiest of the geek-heads at Apple, they are loaded with incredibly useful information. The link to the videos in iTunes is Introduction to the iPhone SDK. We also recommend you the Standford iPhone Application Programming course. The programs are available on http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php.
Interesting URL Links relative to iphone Development :
(Apps Amuck offers a directory containing free tutorials for professionals and hobbyists iPhone developers).
How to build a iphone from a web applications see : (new distribution method as of iPhone OS 2.1