Views : 2630  |
Favoured : 45 |
Ajax on a PDA: a reality check
Apple's iPhone (to be launched in the US this Friday, in case you didn't notice the hype ) is sold as the best iPod ever and a user-friendly cell phone/camera/PDA. It can run some widgets such as weather, Youtube, Google Maps and a notepad. Everything runs on top of a version of OS X tailored for a PDA processor (probably an Intel Xscale).
However, it can't run any Mac OS X applications and Apple forbids the development of third-party native softwares: no development kit is available.
Also, its virtual keyboard could discourage some customers even if it's backed by an "intelligent" errors prediction system.
So is it only a case of Steve Jobs's RDF at work or is it there a solution to run real apps, such as a mini office suite? After all, wouldn't it be nice to access or modify documents on the go with this ultralight 135 grams, 3.5" device? Nobody wants to fire up a full sized notebook while walking in the street. How would that work with no possibility to develop real apps?
Well, there's a solution: the underying OS X layer, although limited by its implementation on a PDA processor, powers the full engine of Apple's Safari web browser under an interface adapted to the small screen of the device. Safari supports Ajax web applications and more and more web-based productivity utilities are being developed using this technique. One of the most famous being Google's Docs . Interestingly, Google is currently busy building stronger ties with Apple.
Its a major feature: no other PDA browser can currently support Ajax that well.
Microsoft is working on its Deepfish browser for Windows Mobile but it doesn't support Ajax: no web app. Other projects like Minimo(zilla) are still in development.
How would a spreadsheet look like? We used Safari for Windows, released a few weeks ago and finally usable after some serious bug fixing. If we believe Apple, it's supposed to have the same level of compatibility as its iPhone version.
Let's load it on a 5" UMPC (an OQO 01) and see what happens:
That's quite surprising, 4 days to the release of the "Safariphone", but it actually works:
it turns out this message is only an unnecessary warning.
That's how Google Spreadsheets running in Safari could look on a screen roughly the size of the iPhone.
Note that the iPhone would probably not run Google Docs "as is": the OQO display is slightly wider and the code would need some iPhone-specific optimisations.
And that's something the iPhone can't run: openoffice.org a fully-featured open source office suite running here on XP.
However, the main impression is that these two different technical solutions look like not-so-distant relatives.
Google Spreadsheets can't run macros or access advanced functions but for quick data entries via a very light device, many people could live with that.
Spreadsheets has no advanced import/export functions but it's easily upgradable: Google only needs to change the code once on its server while Windows Mobile's Pocket Excel is nearly totally locked in ROM. With the iPhone's smooth zooming features, an Ajax web spreadsheet would probably be a lot more user-friendly to use than Windows Mobile Pocket Excel on a PocketPC.
Where's the catch?
- You need to be connected to the web to access Google. With a phone that's only WiFi+EDGE that could mean very heavy phone bills or losing data's
- By default, Google detects the country you're connected from and loads the correspondingly translated user interface: very annoying if you're visiting a foreign country
- Google develops Gears, an offline intelligent cache that keeps your Google docs tools working like if they were online. But its support on the iPhone is unclear.
- You're leaving sensitive data's in Google's (or another web services provider) hands. Do you trust it enough to make that compromise?
- Whether Safari-optimised Ajax apps will behave totally as expected on the iPhone still needs to be confirmed this Friday
More Ajax technologies to keep an eye on:
-AjaxOffice , a web-based version of openoffice.org that'd would eventually run on your own server, not Google's. It's still in its early stages.
-Web OS'es: run a full simplified desktop inside a browser. One such project is the open source Eye OS. Click here to open its demo page.
A standard development kit would truly unleash iPhone's capabilities but the possibility of accessing complex web content on ultralight devices could trigger exciting development ideas.
Photo credit for the iPhone pictures : courtesy of Apple.
|
