Apple’s guidelines for iPhone app development

If you’re interested in developing web apps for the iPhone—and hey, it’s the hottest gadget since desk lamps, so why wouldn’t you?—there are a few things you should know. Fortunately, many of them are covered by Apple themselves in their Development Guidelines.

For those of us mere mortals who are more interested in perusing what the iPhone can or can’t do, the page is a wealth of information about web capabilities, media compatibility, and the theories behind how people interact with the gadget.

For example, Apple makes a big point about your finger not being the same as your mouse; in some ways, it’s a lot less precise. I’ve come across this trouble with sites that use a numbered pagination system (for example, search for something common in Google, and then try to navigate to a page by number, instead of hitting the “next” button). It’s really hard to hit the right link when they’re so close together: usually, you have to spend some time zooming in to make sure you hit the right one.

But if you’re curious about what the dimensions of designing for the iPhone are, or how best to lay out forms for the iPhone, or how you should encode your media, this resources is invaluable.

Category: Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Jul 11 2007, 12:01 PM ET

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