Beginning iOS Programming: Building and Deploying iOS Applications

Chapter 8Using Web Views

WHAT YOU LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Displaying web pages in an app
• Calling Core Foundation methods for efficient string manipulation
• Using toolbars and buttons to create a lightweight web browser

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at www.wrox.com/go/begiosprogramming on the Download Code tab. The code is in the chapter 08 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

One of the first and biggest selling points of smartphones was the ability to surf the web. Many refer to this as having the entire web in your pocket. Even before smartphones were the norm, some flip phones also allowed you to search the web with your cellular connection.

iOS devices come with Apple’s Mobile Safari web browser, but similar to sending e-mails and posting to social networking, it’s a better experience for users to view web pages without leaving the app they’re in. One of the feature requirements for the Bands app gives users the ability to search the web for information about a particular band. As the developer you could accomplish this by simply jumping the user out of the app and into Safari. Though easy to do, it breaks the flow of the user in your app. A better approach is to allow the user to surf the web within the app itself. In this chapter, you add a lightweight web browser to the bands apps, allowing users to search the web for their bands without leaving the app.

LEARNING ...