iPhone offline apps made possible by HTML 5 compliant Mobile Safari

Cleve Nettles
|
February 18, 2009
|
Share

It shouldn't come as a surprise that offline web apps are on the way to iPhone and Android platforms in the form of Google Offline.  The trick is that newer browser technology allows the storage of cached information in database form.  In Firefox and Safari, you currently need Google Gears to do this.  Soon it will be built in (like in Chrome). 

Also, new betas of Firefox allow geolocation in the browser but as you can see from the video below, so do new versions of Webkit.  This should be standard in all browsers within a year.  The video from MWC 2009:

And also a Palm Pre running Google Maps as a web app, below

Comments (3)

M. (not verified) | February 18, 2009 - 1:45pm

I love Google, my ipod touch is more and more beginning to do all the stuff i do with my macbook at the moment. just wish for a larger screen area, like a 7 inch ipod touch.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2009 - 2:24pm

This could explain why we don't see any real work on native apps from google. They are waiting to use this technology like with google gears on desktops so they don't need to develop a local app.

Darren (not verified) | February 18, 2009 - 4:37pm

The prefs pane for mobile safari on the iPhone already allows you to set a size limit for local database storage, so some of this capability must already be here...