HTML 5 Web Apps

It's amazing what you can do with HTML / JavaScript / CSS across many platforms these days. SmartPhones, Tablets, PC's, etc... all provide browsers that can do more or less the same things. Local datastorage, animation, scripting, AJAX, and other technologies are becomming almost consistant over a wide range of devices. ChromOS is a logic extension of this idea, but even on other platforms, there is a drive for web apps to "just work".

Problems / Solutions

Hardware Access to hardware is difficult on many systems. On the SmartPhones, some hardware is accessable as a sub-object of the navigator object in the browser. On PC's, other drivers must be installed to allow access to anything outside the browsers "sandbox". The most common example of this is access to web cams via Adobe FLASH.

Hardware access drivers:

• http://www.walking-productions.com/jsserial/new/JSSerial.html Serial port access from browser javascript, via Java, via a DLL. Yike.
• http://phonegap.com/ Actually converts web apps into native phone apps. Allows access to some phone hardware such as geolocation, accelerometers, and compass.

Cross browser Basically, it boils down to this: Internet Explorer sucks. Most other browers do most things the same; IE is in it's own world. JQuery and other libraries may help to remove the differences.

See also:

• http://www.jqtouch.com/ Enables easy conversion / formatting of web pages and apps to smartphones and tablets.
• http://phonegap.com/ PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores. Allows access to some phone hardware such as geolocation, accelerometers, and compass.

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