Develop iPhone Web applications with Eclipse
Apple’s iPhone platform presents an interesting opportunity to developers. With a small form factor and interactive touch screen, the iPhone and iPod Touch have won over millions of users in a short period of time. But this novel design and proprietary platform present a new set of challenges for application developers. Until Apple releases its software development kit (SDK) in February 2008, developers wishing to target the platform must create Web applications that mimic the iPhone’s native look and feel.
Fortunately, a new set of open source tools is available to make this easier. Aptana’s iPhone Development plug-in for Eclipse generates iPhone-specific projects and previews applications in a rotatable viewfinder. Joe Hewitt’s iUi, a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript framework, contains a grab bag of widgets and pages that emulate the native iPhone experience.
