Using Webkit in iPhone

When iPhone was released a few years ago, the world of mobile technology practically stood still and watched how iPhone become the signal for next generation form of mobile phones. Fans and even antagonists of Apple have come out and praised the company for coming out with this innovative product.

Although iPhone do not have the usual hard drive that could let you store thousands of songs it now has the touch screen capabilities that only a handful of companies have thought of. Today, it is one of revolutionary inventions of the new century.

But for developers, the fun only started this year when Apple finally allowed developers to build applications that could be installed in their mobile phone.

Although the terms and conditions are a little bit overwhelming “for security reasons”, this has not prevented developers from building applications that could run in this popular mobile phone.

As soon as application installation has been allowed in iPhone, developers realized that developing applications of iPhone could be very difficult especially when you are planning to build an Ajax based application with the help of WebKit.

In iPhone, WebKit could be invoked with a simple function UIWebView. This function will let developers run the JavaScript based application in the Safari browser without any problem.

One of the challenges developers have to face in building an Ajax or JavaScript based application is that the mobile phone is not really equipped to handle WebKit.

Yes, iPhone is the next generation of mobile phones and it has the small and very significant UIWebView but the hardware capacity of iPhone may not be able to handle JavaScript well.

It is not that iPhone will stop working but it is just that iPhone might not render the application fast enough.

A few seconds of delay is ok for developers but that lag is not okay of Apple. According to their terms and conditions, developers have to build an application with JavaScript that could run for only five seconds or less.

After five seconds, the browser will automatically stop the function. Although there are lots of things that you could do with mere five seconds, it presupposes that the application is being run in an area wherein the internet connection is better.

But that is almost impossible especially when you are planning to be mobile. iPhone now has 3G but the networks are not that powerful and you will only end up with a strong GPRS connection.

If you can deal with thousands of dollars in data transfer charges then you can constantly connect online. That problem is already from the point of view of the consumer but if you want your application to be acknowledged by every iPhone user, you need to have a competitive application.

WebKit in iPhone is practically clipped by the terms and conditions of Apple which is a little bit unfortunate. The phone itself is amazing as it does a lot of things and will be able to do more in the near future but for now, further development of Ajax based application is highly controlled.