This JavaScript framework is not specific for iPhone and other Apple devices. It was designed for different modern mobile devices focused on AJAX functionality, offering functions to avoid the complexity of developing this technology from scratch. In fact, it is very useful due to differences between web browsers of the mobile platforms and operating systems. This recipe explains how to install the WebApp.Net on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X operating systems.
Getting ready
WebApp.Net is a set of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files packed and distributed as a ZIP file and can be downloaded for free. We’ll need a web browser to download this file and a tool to decompress it.
How to do it…
Type the following URL on your favorite web browser and click on the link located on the right (get it now: v0.5.2): http://webapp-net.com/.
When the file has been downloaded, it can be decompressed using a tool such as WinZip on Windows. Safari users will find a new folder called base-package-v0 on the default folder for downloads. Linux users can execute the following command from a terminal tool:
After decompressing, you will need to copy the required files of the framework to our folder under control of the web server. For instance, you will execute these commands on Mac:
How it works…
The main ZIP file of the framework contains many files but the most important is the WebApp folder that will be needed for developing our own web applications for the Apple devices. In order to use the WebApp.Net framework, at a minimum we will need two files that should be included on the head section of our HTML pages. Actually, the following lines are required:
Inside the WebApp folder, we can find different subfolders such as Design, Action, and Img. The first one of them stores two CSS files and some graphic images required by these stylesheets. Action subfolders contain the main JavaScript file called Logic.js and the last subfolder is Img, responsible for the main graphic files needed to get a native look and feel for the applications.
There’s more…
As a part of the commented WebApp main folder, this framework contains other folders inside the ZIP file. These subfolders are Debug and Tools. The first one offers the JavaScript and CSS files without minimizing them, which is useful for development environments. They are more human readable than the others included on the WebApp main folder. The Tools subfolder has one PHP file for allowing us to use a proxy with the XML data. In addition, two stylesheets are also included. One of them is specific for the Mozilla Firefox web browser and can be used for testing and developing our web applications.
WebApp.Net has a complete documentation for users and developers that can be found at: http://webapp-net.com/Doc/.
Same case as iWebKit, you can find a complete and useful forum for WebApp.
Net at: http://webapp-net.com/Forums/.
