Web Applications
For the first year of the iPhone, there was no App Store. No add-on programs, no way to make the iPhone do new, cool stuff (at least not without hacking it). Apple gave iPhone programmers only one bit of freedom: They could write iPhone-shaped Web pages tailored for the iPhone.
Some of these iPhone Web applications look like desktop widgets that do one thing really well—like showing you a Doppler radar map for local weather. Some are minipages that tap directly into sites like Flickr and Twitter. Some even let you tap into Web-based word processing sites if you need to create a document right this very instant.
Today, regular iPhone programs do everything those Web apps once did. Web apps were essentially a workaround, a placeholder solution until Apple could get its App Store going. So Web apps are fast fading away now that the App Store is in business.
If you' re still interested, you can read about these antique iPhone artifacts in the free downloadable Appendix to this chapter. It's available from this book's "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com.
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