Web standards and the Apple iPhone

Well it seems everyone and their dog is talking about the Apple iPhone and it remains to be seen as to whether this is the killer app that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs thinks it is. The great news (if it really takes off that is) is that for web developers at least, building websites for this device should be a lot simpler as it comes with a customized version of Safari. So we get all the support for web standards, Ajax, and other niceties that come with it.

Apple has released basic developer documentation detailing the unique iPhone features that are supported. For example:

Web applications can provide links to dial phone numbers with the tel: URL scheme:

<a href="tel:1-408-555-5555">1-408-555-5555</a>

Links with the mailto: scheme open the iPhone’s built-in email composition screen:

<a href="mailto:me@example.com">email me</a>

The iPhone detects links to Google Maps and displays them with its built-in mapping application instead:

<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=bristol">Bristol</a>

The iPhone supports CSS 3 Media Queries, which allow you to specify a separate style sheet for the iPhone

You’ll also need to be aware that as other browsers begin to support media queries, iPhone-specific style sheets will apply to all devices with a display width less than or equal to 480 pixels.

• The iPhone supports a <meta name="viewport">
tag that controls the rendered width of the page, how the page is scaled when first displayed, and how much control the user has over page scaling.
• The iPhone supports a number of file formats for embedded video, including H.264 and MPEG-4.
• The iPhone supports downloading and displaying PDF documents.

What Apple have done is produced a potential mass market device with decent web standards support and hopefully we’ll see other manufacturers following and building on this positive move.