Mobile Ajax and the Future of the Web

The Web and mobile ecosystems are converging. The Web is an evolving medium and is extending to embrace the mobile platform. At the same time, mobile devices are becoming more Web-friendly and mobile browsers are becoming more sophisticated. The iPhone showcases this convergence in action.

The advanced browser supports the Ajax platform well and can render most sites designed for desktop usage. However, the iPhone browser really shines when used with content designed specifically for the mobile use case. Examples of this include the iPhone facebook app and Google application such as search and gmail.

This talk will follow from the discussion on usability to showcase specific UI techniques that can be implemented using Mobile Ajax to develop application-like UI, not only on the iPhone but on any device equipped with an advanced browser (such as Nokia N-series phones). Appelquist will showcase and talk a bit about some of the reasons standard Ajax development techniques fall down on the mobile browser (even iPhone) and talk about how some Ajax toolkits such as Dojo and Laszlo are addressing this head on. The idea is to energize people about the mobile Ajax platform (across devices) and to get people thinking about using web technologies to build these mobile-specific user experiences.

Appelquist will back all of this up with some info on what he’s working on in the W3C Mobile Web Initiatives around guidelines for mobile web applications and also work in the OpenAjax Alliance around Mobile Ajax.