iPhone may cause web developers to take note of Safari
Safari, the built-in browser on Mac computers, has often been overlooked by web developers who favour the likes of Firefox, and struggle to cope with the idiosyncrasies of Internet Explorer.
An interesting article by Technology Evangelist suggests that web developers may start taking more notice of Safari now that a version of it will be part of the iPhone operating system.
The launch of the iPhone will be a tipping point in web development, marking the day that web developers start taking the Safari browser seriously for developing web applications.
Though it's not clear how much the closed architecture of the iPhone will inhibit web development itself, developers are sure to want to ensure that their web sites render well in Safari.
Safari on the Mac does an admirable job of displaying content, but it often falls over when working with AJAX and other rich content. Not that it's impossible to get those elements to work in Safari - it's just harder for a time-strapped web developer to ensure things work in a browser that currently only accounts for around 5% market share, when compared with Firefox.
I believe Safari's marketshare is about to skyrocket when the iPhone is released. Unlike traditional smartphones the iPhone has a full browser on board that, in theory, should be able to run full AJAX powered web sites, secure web sites and just about anything you can throw at it. No one but Apple and Co. really know for sure since the iPhone is not out yet, but it is powered by a slimmed down version of Mac OS X and uses Webkit to drive the browser. This means that any developer who makes their sites work in Safari should have their sites then work on the iPhone with little to no code modification. That's powerful.
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