Adit > Software For Mobile Devices > Browser-based

Browser-based

Software Development

Web applications are described as those developed using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - slightly disingenuous
because many rely upon server based services. The current situation is pretty encouraging, but there are
some (at least short term) snags if one were looking for a universal “write once, run anywhere” approach
to mobile application development.

Mobile browser support for HTML5 is still patchy although excellent results have been achieved on the
Android and iPhone platforms.

Programming is straightforward using a desktop browser for development and initial testing.
Device testing for layout issues is important as the mobile browsers have a number of features
to facilitate the rendering of “normal” web sites and sometimes these need working around to get
the right scale and style applied to a web app page. We have found MS Visual Studio to be an excellent
IDE for developing web apps targeted at mobile.

Rumour has it that Phone 7 will soon switch browser technology from IE7 to IE9. If whatever gets ported
includes effective support for HTML5 then it will be straightforward to add CSS support forPhone 7.
We also expect that support for Opera Mobile will be straightforward to add to the web app bundle
and this has the potential to make web apps targeting HTML5 capable of running on older Windows mobile devices.