Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: Making App Store Apps Without Objective-C or Cocoa

by Jonathan Stark

Overview

What people are saying about Building iPhone Apps w/ HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

"The future of mobile development is clearly web technologies like CSS, HTML and JavaScript. Jonathan Stark shows you how to leverage your existing web development skills to build native iPhone applications using these technologies."

--John Allsopp, author and founder of Web Directions

"Jonathan's book is the most comprehensive documentation available for developing web applications for mobile Safari. Not just great tech coverage, this book is an easy read of purely fascinating mobile tidbits in a fun colloquial style. Must have for all PhoneGap developers."

-- Brian LeRoux, Nitobi Software

It's a fact: if you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you already have the tools you need to develop your own iPhone apps. With this book, you'll learn how to use these open source web technologies to design and build apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch on the platform of your choice-without using Objective-C or Cocoa.

Device-agnostic mobile apps are the wave of the future, and this book shows you how to create one product for several platforms. You'll find guidelines for converting your product into a native iPhone app using the free PhoneGap framework. And you'll learn why releasing your product as a web app first helps you find, fix, and test bugs much faster than if you went straight to the App Store with a product built with Apple's tools.

• Build iPhone apps with tools you already know how to use
• Learn how to make an existing website look and behave like an iPhone app
• Add native-looking animations to your web app using jQTouch
• Take advantage of client-side data storage with apps that run even when the iPhone is offline
• Hook into advanced iPhone features -- including the accelerometer, geolocation, and vibration -- with JavaScript
• Submit your applications to the App Store with Xcode

This book received valuable community input through O'Reilly's Open Feedback Publishing System (OFPS).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449382919
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/08/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	186
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Jonathan Stark is a mobile and web application consultant who the Wall Street Journal has called an expert on publishing desktop data to the web. He has written two books on web application programming, is a tech editor for both php|architect and Advisor magazines, and has been quoted in the media on internet and mobile lifestyle trends. Jonathan began his programming career more than 20 years ago on a Tandy TRS-80 and still thinks Zork was a sweet game.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 Getting Started 1

Web Apps Versus Native Apps? 1

What Is a Web App? 1

What Is a Native App? 1

Pros and Cons 2

Which Approach Is Right for You? 2

Web Programming Crash Course 3

Intro to HTML 3

Intro to CSS 6

Intro to JavaScript 9

2 Basic iPhone Styling 13

First Steps 14

Preparing a Separate iPhone Stylesheet 16

Controlling the Page Scaling 17

Adding the iPhone CSS 19

Adding the iPhone Look and Feel 21

Adding Basic Behavior with jQuery 23

What You've Learned 28

3 Advanced iPhone Styling 29

Adding a Touch of Ajax 29

Traffic Cop 29

Simple Bells and Whistles 34

Roll Your Own Back Button 40

Adding an Icon to the Home Screen 46

Full Screen Mode 48

Changing the Status Bar 48

Providing a Custom Startup Graphic 49

What You've Learned 50

4 Animation 51

With a Little Help from Our Friend 51

Sliding Home 51

Adding the Dates Panel 55

Adding the Date Panel 56

Adding the New Entry Panel 58

Adding the Settings Panel 60

Putting It All Together 62

Customizing jQ Touch 64

What You've Learned 67

5 Client-Side Data Storage 69

localStorage and sessionStorage 69

Saving User Settings to localStorage 70

Saving the Selected Date to sessionStorage 73

Client-Side Database 74

Creating a Database 75

Inserting Rows 78

Selecting Rows and Handling Result Sets 82

Deleting Rows 86

What You've Learned 89

6 Going Offline 91

The Basics of the Offline Application Cache 91

Online Whitelist and Fallback Options 94

Creating a Dynamic Manifest File 98

Debugging 102

The JavaScript Console 103

The Application Cache Database 107

What You've Learned 113

7 Going Native 115

Intro to PhoneGap 115

Usingthe Screen's Full Height 121

Customizing the Title and Icon 123

Creating a Startup Screen 130

Installing Your App on the iPhone 131

Controlling the iPhone with JavaScript 136

Beep, Vibrate, and Alert 136

Geolocacion 140

Accelerometer 146

What You've Learned 150

8 Submitting Your App to iTunes 151

Creating an iPhone Distribution Provisioning Profile 151

Installing the iPhone Distribution Provisioning Profile 153

Renaming the Project 155

Prepare the Application Binary 156

Submit Your App 157

While You Wait 159

Further Reading 159

Index 161