This is a list of open/unanswered technical questions about the iPhone as asked on the iPhoneWebDev email discussion list. Any fully answered questions will be moved to the Closed Questions section at the end, and eventually moved to iPhone Developer FAQ if applicable.

 

This is a temporary location for the Open Questions. The final version will be posted more permanently at iPhoneWebDev Open Questions page.

 

Please use the format •Q: plaintext question, (italic speculation), A: bold final answer .

 

Open Questions

 

• Q: When will the information presented at WWDC in the session "Designing Web Content for iPhone" be released publicly out from confidentiality so that we can start sharing/talking about it? (CA: I have really good notes from the session {went twice}, so if it isn't out by the release of the iPhone or by iPhoneDevCamp I can offer the information then.) A: ?

 

• Q: While you are speaking on the cell phone, can you use the internet if there is no wifi connection? A: From Think Secret: Sending an email or using Safari over the EDGE network will not be available while making a phone call; if you send an email, it won't send until after the call has ended. Such applications can, however, take advantage of Wi-Fi networking to use the Internet while placing a call.

 

• Q: Can the web browser know who is calling? Does the web browser know that it has been interrupted? A: ?

 

• Q: Where are bookmarks sync'ed to? Only Safari 3.0? .Mac? Google Bookmarks? A: ?

 

• Q: What is the actual pixel size of the iPhone screen available to web designer? (CA: There is some discussion on this topic in this thread.) A: ?

 

• Q: Can we turn off any of the iPhone UI elements (the "chrome")? (CA: It appears from the demos that the address bar scrolls away, so there may be some way to script a forced scroll event to hide it. So far, it does not appear that you can hide the lower UI bar with the bookmarks and pages buttons) A: Yes, using window.scrollTo(0, 1);. Example at: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/hideurl.html

 

• Q: What "keyboard" input panels are available? Demos show a phone dialer, qwerty (alphabetic a-z), and number/punctuation (1234567890-/:;()&@'.,?!). What about symbols and international characters? (CA: Screenshots are requested.) A: On the US phones there seem to be little support for internationalization. Only a-z, no Swedish, no Japanese. The EU/Asia releases will doubtless be different. There are 4 known keypads: "regular text", "urls", "phone numbers", "zip codes".

 

• Q: How do we get the URL input panel? (CA: we've tried url, http, website, webpage, homepage, email, emailaddress) A: ?

 

• Q: Can we give hints in our forms as to what keyboard input panel to default to? A: All except the url keypad have been tracked down for input forms. Example: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/input.html -- Note that if the iPhone mistakenly gives a user the "phone" keyboard, the user will be unable to change to another keyboard.

 

• Q: Will the page receive resize events when the page is re-oriented, allowing us to change CSS? A: At this point, polling for window.innerWidth seems to be the answer. See examples: http://www.joehewitt.com/files/liquid1.html, http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/liquified/liquified.html, http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/liquified/gradient_liquified.html

 

• Q: What is the official term-of-art for the expanded/zoomed-out mode, vs. a real size zoomed-in mode? A: ?

 

• Q: Are any events sent to the page when the page zoomed-out? A: ?

 

• Q: The demos showed switching between number of pages previously loaded. Are these pages in the background running, or halted in some form of cache? A: ?

 

• Q: What limits on local storage are there? Are cookies unusually limited? Is google gears or some other persistent storage supported? A: ?

 

• Q: Can we have multiple email accounts? A: Yes. You can add multiple accounts to Mail.app and the iPhone will allow access to them all (tested with up to 3 accounts)

 

• Q: What email services are offering imap push? A: ?

 

• Q: What settings can the user set? Can we see all the settings menus? A: ?

 

• Q: The url protocol for placing phonecalls seems to be "tel:". What non-numerals, e.g. "tel:1-573-555-0981", "tel:1-510-573-555-0981x1", letters like "tel:1-800-CALL-XYZ", or special functions like wait or pause are supported? A: ?

 

• Q: The url for email is "mailto:" -- does the iPhone support RFC 2368 extended mailto: schemes like <mailto:listserv@example.com?subject=unsubscribe> function properly? A: Yes, it does. We've tested subject and body. Example: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/mailto.html

 

• Q: How do we debug web pages on the iPhone? Is there a javascript console? A: No console from Apple. Here's firebug for iPhone by Joe Hewitt

 

• Q: Does double-tap from zoomed-out mode to zoomed-in mode send an event to a javascript handler? A: ?

 

• Q: There is some type of "tap and hold" functionality that gives an info bubble -- how is this different then existing tooltips? A: ?

 

• Q: If onmouseover is not supported, can we instead do things like javascript-based menus with hover? Any issues or differences with hover on the iPhone? A: ?

 

• Q: Windows Mobile has a standard for right-click... you hold one spot for a second, and a little ring of dots builds until a context menu appears. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent on the iPhone. Or are we missing something? A: ?

 

• Q: Is there any way to detect, or emulate, the pinch-zoom function in javascript? A: ?

 

• Q: When creating iPhone webapps that emulate the internal apps ui, what is the recommended technique for pinning toolbars to the bottom of the display? A: http://www.launchpadhq.com/experiments/toolbar-simple.html

 

• Q: Can we add icons to a bottom iPhone toolbar that appears in Safari at all times for a page to make it easier to add always visible navigation w/ no jscript? A: Yes. http://www.launchpadhq.com/experiments/toolbar-icons.html

 

• Q: Is there anything special we need to do to support flick-scrolling ui in iPhone webapps? A: ?

 

• Q: Is it possible to determine the users location from a web page?

 

• Q: Can we determine the presence of a bluetooth device from a web page?

 

• Q: Is there support of DOM mutation events in the iPhone? (CA: We have tested this with SynchroEdit using the current build of WebKit, and it does seem to work. Unknown if it is supported on iPhone yet.) A: ?

 

• Q: Does the iPhone browser support continuous connections, i.e. the ability to keep the browser at readystate==3 and not "finish" sending the page for more interactive pages? (CA: This approach appears to be a Firefox-only feature, and does not seem to work in SynchroEdit in the latest WebKit. Using javascript setInterval() on a function with a frequency of 3 times/sec, polling the actual XMLHttpRequest object's input buffer for new data, does seem to work on both Firefox and WebKit, but has issues of latency and performance as compared to the readystate==3 approach. But it may be good enough.) A: ?

 

• Q: What media types will the iPhone broswer support. Will it have custom a custom media type? ( If I was going to design the device I would make it honor the handheld media type.) A:

 

• Q: What does the iPhone browser do when the user opens:
  • .ics files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .vcf (vCard) files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .m3u files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .url files? A: Opens as text.
  • .lnk files? A: ?
  • a OS X Desktop-based Safari .web archive? A: ?
  • .txt files? A: Opens as text.
  • .mp3 files? A: Opens w/ Quicktime within browser
  • .pdf files? A: Opens in browser.
  • .xls files? A: Opens in browser.
  • .doc files? A: Opens in browser.
  • .css files? A: Opens as text.
  • .wav files? A: Opens w/ Quicktime (but Quicktime seems unable to play .wav)
  • .avi files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .mov files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .wma files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .ppt files? A: "Safari can't download this file."

 

• Q: What does the iPhone mail client do when the user opens:
  • .ics files? A: ?
  • .vcf (vCard) files? A: ?
  • .m3u files? A: ?
  • .url files? A: ?
  • .lnk files? A: ?
  • a OS X Desktop-based Safari .web archive attached to an email? A: ?

 

• Q: Will the iPhone browser support the file:// protocol or something like it to access internal files such as MP3, video, and photos? Is it possible to upload a photo taken on the iPhone to a web page? (CA: We've never seen a file saved permanently to the iPhone in demos, and we've seen demos where the upload button is disabled, so there may be a firewall between the internal data and the web.) A: Trying "file://" in the browser returns "Safari can't open the page because it is a local file.". So file:// is supported, but whether it is useable or not is another question. :)

 

• Q: What Safari specific functionality should we be taking advantage of on the iPhone that we normally avoid for cross-platform compatibility? (DC: for instance css "text-shadow: #000000 3px 3px 3px;", css "text-overflow: ellipsis;" (automatically cuts off at visible text and adds ...), PNG Transparency, Object.onselectstart = function () { return false; } to prevent selecting text while dragging.) A:

 

• Q: If an iPhone is purchased in the States can it still be used via WiFi anywhere else, i.e. to access a localized website to help in developing iPhone aware content? A: It can be used but it requires some tweaking (it must be activated in a specific way). According to the AT&T training manual (Pg 14), No - the phone must be activated in iTunes before anything will work. Quote: iPhone will remain inactive until it is activated using iTunes. In the inactive state it will not make or receive calls, except for emergency calls. As well, the iPod, Internet, and Wi-Fi capabilities will not be functional until the device is activated.

 

• Q: What Javascript audio commands and file formats will work on a webpage?

 

• Q: We hear reports of no mousedown events, only mouseup. Is this the case?

 

Closed Questions

 

• Q: Can we have javascript in bookmarks to create bookmarklets? If javascript in bookmark is executed, will it have sufficient context that things like bookmarklets can retrieve information about the current page, or that modify DOM/DHMTL, will function?

 

• A: Yes, Bookmarklets with javascript are confirmed to be working.