An article over on GearLog details that the one route to get third-party apps onto the iPhone—web applications—may turn out to be easier said than done.

Far from being “first class citizens” with the web applications they tested (among them Google Docs, Meebo and iZoHo), the iPhone had a multitude of problems from not popping up the keyboard in the rich text editors to allowing a “read only” view of Meebo (not very useful for an IM client).

This is disappointing coupled with the fact that the iPhone ships with very limited text editing for documents (email or “notes” seem to be it) and no IM support at all. It also clashes with statements from Steve Jobs at the WWDC keynote.

It appears lousy Ajax support and completely MIA support for Flash is to blame for most of the problems experienced by users of these web applications. Many of the rich internet applications use heavy doses of Ajax and Flash to make the user interface more responsive. Flash is also used to provide on-client storage when the application needs to store more than the small amount allowed in a cookie.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Tech, Mac Stuff, Crimes Against Geekery, Cellular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.