Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Book description

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).

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Table of contents

  1. Dedication
  2. A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
  3. Preface
    1. Who Should Read This Book
    2. What You Need to Use This Book
    3. Conventions Used in This Book
    4. Using Code Examples
    5. Safari® Books Online
    6. How to Contact Us
    7. Acknowledgments
  4. 1. Getting Started
    1. Web Apps Versus Native Apps
      1. What Is a Web App?
      2. What Is a Native App?
      3. Pros and Cons
      4. Which Approach Is Right for You?
    2. Web Programming Crash Course
      1. Intro to HTML
      2. Intro to CSS
      3. Intro to JavaScript
  5. 2. Basic iPhone Styling
    1. First Steps
      1. Preparing a Separate iPhone Stylesheet
      2. Controlling the Page Scaling
    2. Adding the iPhone CSS
    3. Adding the iPhone Look and Feel
    4. Adding Basic Behavior with jQuery
    5. What You’ve Learned
  6. 3. Advanced iPhone Styling
    1. Adding a Touch of Ajax
    2. Traffic Cop
    3. Simple Bells and Whistles
    4. Roll Your Own Back Button
    5. Adding an Icon to the Home Screen
    6. Full Screen Mode
      1. Changing the Status Bar
      2. Providing a Custom Startup Graphic
    7. What You’ve Learned
  7. 4. Animation
    1. With a Little Help from Our Friend
    2. Sliding Home
    3. Adding the Dates Panel
    4. Adding the Date Panel
    5. Adding the New Entry Panel
    6. Adding the Settings Panel
    7. Putting It All Together
    8. Customizing jQTouch
    9. What You’ve Learned
  8. 5. Client-Side Data Storage
    1. localStorage and sessionStorage
      1. Saving User Settings to localStorage
      2. Saving the Selected Date to sessionStorage
    2. Client-Side Database
      1. Creating a Database
      2. Inserting Rows
        1. Error handling
      3. Selecting Rows and Handling Result Sets
      4. Deleting Rows
    3. What You’ve Learned
  9. 6. Going Offline
    1. The Basics of the Offline Application Cache
    2. Online Whitelist and Fallback Options
    3. Creating a Dynamic Manifest File
    4. Debugging
      1. The JavaScript Console
      2. The Application Cache Database
    5. What You’ve Learned
  10. 7. Going Native
    1. Intro to PhoneGap
      1. Using the Screen’s Full Height
      2. Customizing the Title and Icon
      3. Creating a Startup Screen
    2. Installing Your App on the iPhone
    3. Controlling the iPhone with JavaScript
      1. Beep, Vibrate, and Alert
      2. Geolocation
      3. Accelerometer
    4. What You’ve Learned
  11. 8. Submitting Your App to iTunes
    1. Creating an iPhone Distribution Provisioning Profile
    2. Installing the iPhone Distribution Provisioning Profile
    3. Renaming the Project
    4. Prepare the Application Binary
    5. Submit Your App
    6. While You Wait
    7. Further Reading
  12. Index
  13. About the Author
  14. Colophon
  15. Copyright

Product information

  • Title: Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • Author(s): Jonathan Stark
  • Release date: January 2010
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9780596805784