The iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0 are causing quite a resurgence towards the iPhone platform — new users and previous iPhone users alike are both feeling like they have a brand new device in front of them. The App Store allows people to download desktop-class applications directly to their phone and it’s amazing.
However what gets me more excited is the splattering of advanced web technologies that are now in millions of people’s hands courtesy of the Apple and the iPhone. Technologies like CSS3 and sqlite that have only been implemented in the tiniest slice of browsers are now able to be taken advantage of on the iPhone.
Safari performance in iPhone OS 2.0 has been dramatically improved, and this is important because it will continue to allow developers to create great web applications instead of simply going the native Cocoa route. One of the beautiful things about creating applications for the iPhone is that you get to pick which technologies you want to use and implement them where they make the most sense. With the advanced layout rendering capabilities present in Safari, you can create some seriously powerful design logic just by using CSS3 selectors to manipulate your content.
Safari and Firefox have implemented many parts of the CSS3 specification, but the problem is if you’re releasing an application to the masses, you have to support the big ugly dog in the corner, Internet Explorer. All the cool things you can do with CSS3 don’t matter if you’re still supporting older browsers, but on the iPhone you’re only supporting one browser and it happens to have fantastic standards support.
So go ahead and bust out your shadows, rounded corners, and background images, Safari on the iPhone can take it.
