Chrome OS spotlights rapidly changing mobile Web environment

the device."

CSS 3 promises to make browser-based application UIs far more like the richly interactive native applications. "CSS3 gives the develop far greater control over styling the user interface," says Ryan Seddon, Senior Frontend Web Developer with DTDigital, a Melbourne, Australia Web design firm. Seddon has his own Web site: The CSS Ninja.

"With CSS3, you can create effects that would usually [otherwise] require a mixture of CSS, JavaScript, and images, essentially reducing [page] load times and increasing the overall 'snappiness' of the Web app," Seddon explains.

But there are tradeoffs with the new generation of browser applications. Because JavaScript is not compiled for a given operating system, "you lose a lot a level of [application] optimization for the underlying platform," says Dan Sharoni, Emerging Mobility Lead, with Accenture Technology Labs, the R&D arm of the global consulting and technology services firm.

"It's a not a 'mobile phone' anymore: it's a computing platform," he says. "So it's very important to give developers access to those features so they can take advantage of them." One possible solution, he says, is for device makers create and publish new JavaScript APIs or other programs specifically for this purpose.

Enterprise developers need to be aware of limitations still inherent in mobile browsers, says Samir Karande, head of mobile vertical, at Persistent Systems, a global outsourced software development firm in Pune, India., with a decade of work in mobile applications. "If I want to place an e-commerce app on a mobile device, it may not be possible with just a browser app," he says. "Because I need personal information stored on the device, more than just a username and password stored in a cookie."

One of the big promises of the new generation of mobile browser applications is that they can be written once and then deployed easily by any compatible browser. But in practice things are not yet that simple, Karande says. "A browser might support HTML5, but not completely," he says. "If you have CSS and JavaScript, most likely every mobile operating system will present it differently. There are different versions of Webkit, and they may not all behave in the same way."

Infinity Software of Beaverton, Ore., offers a range of calculation programs, such as FastFigures, for PCs and mobile platforms, including the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and RIM's BlackBerry OS. A Web browser development model would simplify development and deployment and cut costs, says CEO, Elia Freedman, who started the company as a college senior 12 years ago, writing software for the PalmOS. But he's not doing it for two reasons.

"But I talked to my customers and they are not comfortable with [relying on] the Internet connections for their mobile devices," he says. "Having a Web-only app is a major problem because customers can't assume the network connection will be there, or be fast enough."

Secondly, FastFigure incorporates a powerful calculation engine written in C (another version is in Java) for optimal performance, and far beyond what JavaScript can handle.

It's especially frustrating to Freedman, who was excited by the original iPhone release because Apple insisted at the time it would only permit applications that would run inside its advanced mobile Safari browser. "It was the first time that mobile developers had a real browser to play with, with a real JavaScript engine, a real Web connection," he says. With the release of the Apple SDK for iPhone requiring applications to be written in Apple's Objective C, "Apple abandoned all the Web developers," he says. He blogs on this and other issues.