The Mobile Web - HTML5 and JavaScript Web Apps - page 10

Figure 2-1. WebKit revisions
Mobile Safari (iOS6). Apple's adoption and implementation of early HTML5 specifica‐
tions has been impressive. The company has been an obvious force in pushing the Web
forward. With standard hardware and multicore technology, iPhones and iPads have
been a great platform for HTML5 development. But, it's not all ponies and rainbows in
iOS land, as each mobile browser has its share of quirks and bugs. Earlier iOS versions
suffered from a bug with JavaScript's innerHTML() and forced developers to think of
new ways to insert dynamic content. You'll see the solution to this problem in the next
chapter—as for now, we'll focus on the big picture.
Apple's community process around iOS progression and filing bugs is bound and limited
to the way Apple chooses to do things. You can file bugs with its BugReporter ( http://
bugreport.apple.com ) , but you can search through issues that you submit only. Luckily,
once again, the community has stepped up to give Apple a hand in allowing nonconfi‐
dential data from customers to be openly searched. To see if your bug has already been
filed, you can visit http://openradar.appspot.com/faq .
Android. Even though the Android default browser is based on WebKit, as of this writ‐
ing, its implementation of HTML5 specifications is just starting to beef up in version 4.
As Android evolves, we can rest assured that the coming HTML5 implementations will
evolve with its community ( http://source.android.com/community ) . For now, however,
Android devices are horribly fragmented, and HTML5 support varies on devices and
OS versions.
As for Android's future, the newer Dolphin browser ( http://dolphin-browser.com ) prom‐
ises to deliver major advances in browser technology:
• 5 to 10 times faster than the default Android browser
• 100% faster than Chrome (at times)
• Scored over a 450 when tested on the respected test site, http://HTML5test.com ,
shown in Figure 2-2