Web-Based Application Infrastructure for Mobile Devices

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There is an industry pendulum that swings between centralized computing and decentralized computing that results in timeless debates—mainframes and minis with terminals vs. PCs; network computers vs. full desktops; thin clients vs. fat clients; and now desktop applications vs. software as a service (SaaS). The debate is continuing with the added dimensions of hardware miniaturization and high-speed wireless services.

Imagine if you will, a 21st century business without legacy infrastructure where the majority of applications for communication, collaboration, document management, and business processes are Web-based. The few desktop applications are those optimized for power users—data analysis and visualization, design, and layout. Most applications deployed for everyday or occasional use are delivered to a user over the network and run in a browser. While these Web-based applications may be developed using a wide range of technologies—such as HTML, DHTML, Ajax, Flash, Java, PHP, or Silverlight—they are uniform in the fact that the applications are delivered to the end-user via a browser or browser-based infrastructure. Near term advances in Web-enabled mobile devices will provide both consumer and business users access to these applications. This new class of highly functional mobile devices have modern standards compliant browsers, high resolution screens, and multiple wireless networking options, all in a form factor that is not only portable, but will fit into a large pocket or small purse. A significant change from mobile workers who previously required a laptop in order to access or manipulate all but the most basic information or applications.

The iPhone is a highly visible example. However, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) compliant devices, T-mobile Sidekick, as well as, the Nokia N800 devices can already run full-featured browsers with 2G, 3G, or WiFi data connections in very small form factors. Since 2006, Nokia has been shipping Symbian Series 60-based smartphones with a browser that is based on the same code underlying the Apple, Inc. Safari desktop browser and the Safari browser on the iPhone (referred to as MobileSafari). Within a year, there will be even more devices relevant to this analysis.

The Research In Motion, Ltd. (RIM) BlackBerry brought mobile email to business users and for many it has become a necessity. The BlackBerry has found limited demand for consumers willing to pay business rates for an email focused device. The iPhone is marketed as a mobile Internet device in addition to music playing and email capabilities. Although marketed primary to consumers, it immediately gained a large amount of interest from business users. Apple sold more than a million iPhones in approximately two and a half months. Sales were theoretically limited to U.S. customers. Analysis from the iSuppli Corporation shows that the iPhone outsold all other smartphones in July 2007. In September 2007, Apple dropped the price for the device by one third in anticipation of increasing holiday sales. In addition, Apple recently announced the iPod Touch, which has WiFi, but no cellular voice or data, and runs the same MobileSafari browser as the iPhone. This means that by the end of 2007 Apple will have a sizable number of customers with Internet enabled mobile devices preloaded with it’s MobileSafari browser.

Deploying Web-Based Application

There are well-documented advantages to Web-based application deployment. Management of users and data can be centralized. No data needs to be stored on the device because all data is stored in the “cloud.” New versions can be deployed rapidly and uniformly. Connections to individual applications can be secured with SSL or entire sessions secured via a VPN or other encrypted connection—such as employed by the BlackBerry. In short, substantial functionality can be rolled out with the only requirement being a modern Web-browser.

Some recent examples of applications optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch are indicative of the functionality and flexibility available to this new class of mobile device. Many of the applications have been created with Joe Hewitt’s IUI framework, which encapsulates base functionality for creating Web-based applications for the iPhone in a small open source package.

1. Etelos Systems, Inc. has released a version of its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application for the iPhone. The recent Office 2.0 conference provided all attendees with an iPhone and successfully used Etelos to provide wireless access to attendee profiles and contact information, the conference schedule, sponsor information, conference photos, and video during the event.
2. The iPhone Facebook interface is often held up as an exemplar iPhone application. The navigation is smooth, even on an EDGE connection (80k/s), no scrolling is necessary, and phonebook entries in Facebook can be used to dial with a single click. Effectively, this means that Facebook becomes a self-updating networked address book for mobile devices.
3. Six Apart, Ltd. has designed an iPhone-optimized template for its Movable Type weblog software and it’s TypePad weblog hosting service. The template encompasses both end-user viewing of posts, as well as administrative tools.
4. Media Temple, Inc. has designed an iPhone optimized version of its administration console for its web hosting service that includes most routine administrative functions—such as rebooting servers, adding accounts, and paying bills.

Considerations

When both applications and data are stored on the network, an interruption in connectivity leaves the user without access. For better and worse, the numbers of completely disconnected locations are rapidly diminishing. Currently, there is no infrastructure to support offline Web applications on the iPhone. However, since Google has a working implementation of Google Gears offline infrastructure for the Safari v3 beta. It is not a stretch to assume that Google Gears would eventually make it’s way to the iPhone after a major browser update. The Dojo Offline Toolkit, which uses Google Gears, supports encrypting local data storage for data security on the device.

For companies already deploying Web-based applications, supporting browsers running on mobile devices—in addition to browsers running on PCs—is much less of a leap and the benefits more obvious. When deploying to mobile devices, there are a variety of limitations and constraints that should be taken into consideration. These include potentially limited network bandwidth, the likelihood of intermittent connectivity, smaller screen sizes, more limited processing power, and limited availability of plugins. For example, most smart phones can not run Flash except for the more limited Flash Lite), Adobe AIR, or Microsoft Silverlight and it may be some time before these technologies reach phones.

Mobile devices, especially smartphones, have a variety of input mechanisms from basic numeric keypads using predictive text, to full miniature QWERTY keyboards, to the iPhones virtual keyboard. The input mechanism alone may have a substantial impact on the usability of your mobile application.

Moving Forward

There is some disagreement on the “correct” way to support the web browsing on mobile devices and there are two primary camps. First, the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative, which encourages a number of “best practices” including the use of the “handheld” media type and alternate stylesheets for mobile devices—but otherwise delivering the same content. Similarly, the mobi domain registrar requires that registrants in the mobi top-level domain optimize their sites for mobile users. Opera Mobile and Mini browsers make use of the handheld media type. The second strategy—used by Apple and Nokia (both use the same underlying WebKit rendering engine)—involve a number of techniques to display a full screen Web page in a manner that is viable for reading on a small device using a combination of reformatting, scaling, along with pan and zoom. Somewhere in between, various proxy services, such as Google’s Wireless Transcoder, Skeweezer, and Winksite can reformat or “transcode” content into a format that is more suitable for mobile devices.

Businesses considering deploying Web-based application infrastructure should evaluate the development costs and benefits of applications optimized for mobile devices in addition to desktop and laptop computers. Highly functional email and calendaring is already accepted as a mainstream business use on mobile devices and new class of devices such as the iPhone make a much greater range of applications viable for mobile deployment.

AUTHORS NOTE: Thanks to Chris Allen founder iPhoneWebDev for feedback.