WebKit keeps chugging away. I hear more and more developers talking about how they use Firefox for Firebug debugging, and WebKit nightly for browsing as it is so fast. In mobile, WebKit had another win as you get it with Android.
If you take a look at this video, 3:00 minutes in, you will see WebKit on Android. It looks similar to the iPhone implementation, with the touch screen interface and all. There is also hardware zooming on that particular phone (Android isn’t about one phone, it is an open mobile platform).
There was a day when Web development was in a sad state of affairs. The majority of developers laughed at JavaScript, and were focusing on a killer new server-side web framework, or a new ORM library. The consensus was that that browser was dumb. The modern TN3270 if you will.
A few renegades were actually building fantastic dhtml experiences. We could look up to Erik and Arv, and the many others who pushed the boundaries.
We were giving some talks on “Building killer web sites with dhtml†and we enjoyed surprisingly people with what was available, but the majority still didn’t care. Then Ajax came along and the revolution started. Finally, we could get back to thinking about the user interface and general usability of Web based applications. We could care about the user again!
This is from a post on the new devphone.com, a new community site that hopes to do the same for Ajax, for mobile development. We believe that it is the time of a mobile development renaissance. The iPhone has pushed the boundaries, and Android is joining in the fun. People are already using their mobile devices to do so much, but it is time for really great interfaces to come to life as we have platforms that enable them.
To kick off the community we got to sit down with Joe Hewitt to discuss the iPhone Facebook app, how he develops on the platform, the iPhone in general, and what he would love to see from Apple. We also got to talk about the upcoming Android release and what he is looking to see out of that mobile platform.
Watch and listen to the interview below:
If you are interested in mobile development, check out devphone, subscribe to our feed, and let us know what you would like to see. It is very early days, so who knows which direction it will go.
