The book starts with a general overview of HTML and CSS and then explains how to use CSS, HTML and JQuery to target some of WebKit's proprietary calls to make Web Apps mimic native iPhone app look and feel. It also covers using HTML5 local storage. The last chapter explains how to use a new third-party (open source) PhoneGap SDK to convert your iPhone app to a native application.
So why two stars? Well, there are a few problems with the book. For starters, the pre-face and getting starting portion is not going to prepare anyone. If you don't have a foundation in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc.. You're going to struggle with the content and the information in the first chapter is not going to be enough to help you. With the chapters that follow we get more step by step examples, far too much hand holding and NO SOURCE TO DOWNLOAD (this is unforgivable). Advanced developers will gladly pay for a book just to get their hands on the source and will learn quickly by reading the source code as opposed to reading the authors step-by-step instructions on how to write the source code. For all except beginner books, it's common with tech books that the source code is really what the reader is after and the book becomes a reference (as needed) for understanding the source code. This basic concept of tech book authorship seems to be missing here. This book is formatted as a beginners book but covers more advanced topic, this is a significant flaw in the approach.
Aside from my dislike of the authors approach, there are two other areas where I think this book should have been filled out a bit more. We get no information on using graphics. I know there are hundreds of books out there that cover graphics and animation with CSS/JavaScript, this author had an opportunity to give a chapter or two on this subject in the context of iPhone web app development; this is a huge opportunity missed. If you're looking to create a game app using the HTML/JScript stack to target iPhone this book will do you no good. With iOS4, Safari now supports a lot more of HTML5 which frankly changes a lot. It's not that the techniques covered in this book are all out of date, but there is a lot more that can be done now to make Web Apps mimic native iPhone apps. I realize tech books go out of date quickly, it's important you know this one has already been rendered obsolete in this way.
Finally, the last chapter covers PhoneGap. PhoneGap is an open source SDK that allows web developers to deploy their apps as native apps on many target mobile devices. In context of iPhone native app development, PhoneGap can only be used by developers with MacOS, XCode and the official iPhone dev SDK. It's useless to Windows and Linux developers for the purpose of creating native iPhone apps. Also, PhoneGap supports some really neat features like accelerometer events which this author does not even mention. This is another example of where if this book were just a bit thicker, it could have covered a lot more.
This is the first book I've purchased from O'Reily where I felt the book was a gimmick, written as an attempt to capitalize quickly on a hot subject matter. I can't think of any target audience that would really benefit here. I am very, very disappointed in O'Reily for allowing this one to get out the door. It's not that the author is incompetent, it's that he's not thorough on the subject and his book is not formatted for the advanced technical professional for which is was written.
The author does mention[...]. For the advanced developer (most people reading this book).
Download this library (currently in beta) and it will provide detailed examples of creating web apps the mimic iPhone look and feel. This free toolkit will quickly give you everything you need to know to do what this books aims to teach you and you will pay nothing for it.
[...]Get more detail about
Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: Making App Store Apps Without Objective-C or Cocoa.
