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: How long does it take for Apple to replace this "no SDK" parody of develeopment environment with real solution, such as runtime for Flash Lite or Java MicroEdition ?

 

• Q: Can the "form helper" be hidden in anyway? (the previous, next, and done buttons when editing a form element)

 

• Q: Can we get recording to work or voice input?

 

• Q: How to upload full-resolutions pictures from the iPhone to a web site without going through iPhoto or the email client (which reduces the size to VGA). Or: is there a hack to get the email client to send full size images? A: ?

 

• Q: Does the web browser on Wifi know that it has been interrupted by a phone call on Edge? On Edge-only does it know? A: ?

 

• Q: Can the web browser know who is calling? (CA: Probably not, but we don't know for sure.) 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? (Letters definitely work, they're just mapped to numbers on the keypad. Q is mapped to 7, Z is mapped to 9. Haven't tried pause/wait yet.) A: ?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

• Q: Does double-tap from zoomed-out mode to zoomed-in mode send an event to a javascript handler? A: I don't believe so, but the width, height, and scroll will change. ; No - width and height will NOT change; I don't know about scroll. This answer needs an example write up before it can be considered closed.

 

• Q: Is there any way to detect, or emulate, the pinch-zoom function in javascript? A: See above about changes between zoomed-in and zoomed-out modes.

 

• Q: Is it possible to determine the users location from a web page? A: Instruct the user to click on a map. For a more precise location, you can generally assume the user to be in the restroom, hiding from coworkers.

 

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

 

• 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 does the iPhone browser do when the user opens:
  • .lnk files? A: ?
  • a OS X Desktop-based Safari .web archive? A: ?

 

• Q: What does the iPhone mail client do when the user opens:
  • .ics files? A: attachment shows up but is not clickable
  • .vcf (vCard) files? A: attachment shows up but is not clickable
  • .m3u files? A: ?
  • .url files? A: ?
  • .lnk files? A: ?
  • a OS X Desktop-based Safari .web archive attached to an email? A: ?

 

• 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: How best can we take advantage of the native PDF and .doc file capabilities of iSafari? A: ?

 

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

 

• Q: How fast can we animate via javascript? Are there any guidelines or tricks we can use A: Reports indicate that the timeout and interval functions on the iPhone have been "capped" to not go below a certain threshold. (This needs an example write up.)

 

• Q: Are any QuickTime interactivity features enabled on iPhone? VR Panoramas? SMIL in .MOV or .M4V? Also, can QT be accessed as a plugin to Safari?

 

• Q: Is there a way to have the keyboard appear upon loading a webpage? A: Tested by trying to set focus on load but didn't appear to work.

 

• Q: How do you get multiple tabs within an AJAX web page - It appears that only the current/active tab works.

 

• Q: How do you prevent popups on the iPhone. I went to a site that had six popups and was helpless in changing the settings. Provide example web site, please.

 

 

 

 

 

• Q: Is there a way to create folders to store read email messages other than the ones that show up when accessing an email account? A: ?

 

 

Closed Questions

 

General Info

 

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

 

• A: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/settings.html -- not ALL settings are there, but most that aren't self explanatory are.

 

 

• 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.

 

Display/Chrome

 

• Q: Can we turn off any of the iPhone UI elements (the "chrome")?

 

• A: The top chrome disappears off the top of the screen when the page scrolls. The bottom chrome is fixed in place.

  A web page may automatically scroll the top chrome off when it loads by executing a delayed window.scrollTo(0,1) event. There is a slight delay between the page scrolling and the chrome receding in this case.

  (Example: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/hideurl.html )

 

• Q: Can we reshow the URL bar under javascript control after it has been hidden?

 

• A: No, there is no way for users to re-show the URL bar (window.scrollTo(0, -15) does not work, no).

 

• Q: Can we add icons to the bottom chrome to make it easier to add always-visible navigation with no javascript?

 

• A: Yes.

  (Example: http://www.launchpadhq.com/experiments/toolbar-icons.html ) (DC: I think the answer to this question should be No. Pinning the toolbar to the bottom requires a scrollable div, which means the user must use the 2 finger scrolling technique... it's awkward, not intuitive, and should be avoided wherever possible.)

 

• 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: (See: http://www.launchpadhq.com/experiments/toolbar-simple.html ) (DC: Again, I think we can all agree that the only recommendation we can provide is to not use a pinned toolbar at all. I agree that this is a major set-back, but Apple needs to implement the standard flick scrolling in divs before we can do any toolbar pinning.)

 

 

• Q: There is some type of "tap and hold" functionality that gives an info bubble -- how is this different then existing tooltips? A: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/tooltips.html

 

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

 

• A: No. Pages scroll this way by default. This also partially explains the difficulties in implementing drag & drop, or even mouseDown.

 

Email

 

• 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. This has been tested with up to 3 accounts to date.

 

• Q: How do you create files in email?

 

• A: Generally, you can't. The one exception is that you can email photos from the iPhone. Go to your Photos, select a photo, choose the button left button, then click Email Photo.

 

• Q: How does one create files in mail? A: The only way I can see is to e.g. send a photo from the iPhone in an email. Since iPhones already have very limited support for files (e.g. no downloading/installing), this seems sensible.

 

Events

 

• Q: Are any events sent to the page and javascript active when the page zoomed-out?

 

• A: None. Nor is it possible to poll for width changes as the width stays the same regardless of zoom factor.

 

• Q: Will the page receive resize events when the page is re-oriented, allowing us to change CSS?

 

• A: There is a bug in window.onresize. However, at this point, polling for window.innerWidth seems to be the answer.

  (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: Are any events sent to the page and javascript when the page is in the background?

 

• A: No. Tested window.onfocus/onblur and document.onfocus/onblur but none of them triggered when switching back/forth between the page and another page in Safari on the iPhone.

 

• Q: Can 'onmousemove' be simulated when fingers move across the surface of the iPhone?

 

• A: No. No events trigger until the fingers leave the iPhone.

 

• 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: Hover isn't available; but mouseDown happens, just not when you want it -- only just before mouseUp.

 

• Q: We hear reports of no mousedown events, only mouseup. Is this the case? A: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/events.html

 

File Types

 

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

 

• A: From what it seems, the iPhone acts as if it is a desktop browser, rather than a handheld device. No custom media types are known.

 

• 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.
  • .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."
  • .wma files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .ppt files? A: "Safari can't download this file."
  • .mov files? A: TBD

 

File Type test page here:

http://ipheed.com/post/44/iPhone-Browser-Filetype-Test

 

Javascript

 

• 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.

 

• Q: Does JavaScript execution halt when switching to another page?

 

• A: Yes, events such as those generated via SetInterval are halted when switched to another page.

 

Keyboards

 

• 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?

 

• A: On the US phones there are 4 known keypads: "regular text", "urls", "phone numbers", and "zip codes". They seem to have little support for internationalization. The Europe and Asia releases will doubtless be different.

 

• Q: Can we give hints in our forms as to what keyboard input panel to default to?

 

• A: Yes. The default is the regular text keyboard. If your input box has the name "phone" in it, the iPhone will instead default to the phone numbers keyboard, while if your input box has the name "zip" in it, the iPhone will instead default to the zip codes keyboard.

  Note that if you direct a user to the phone numbers keyboard they cannot change to any other keyboard.

  (Examples: http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/input.html

 

Network

 

• Q: While you are speaking on the cell phone, can you use the internet?

 

• A: You cannot use the EDGE network while you are talking on the cell phone. If you have access to a Wi-Fi network, that is still available while you are making a call.

  If you send an email while making a call and have no access to a Wi-Fi network, it will queue up and send after the call is complete.

  (Source: Think Secret)

 

Programming

 

• 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?

 

• A: Most of the information from the WWDC presentation is now available at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html -- only minor details differ, and it is presumed that the web page is more accurate.

 

• Q: How do we debug web pages on the iPhone? Is there a javascript console?

 

• A: Apple doesn't supply any console, but you can download firebug for the iPhone by Joe Hewitt.

 

• 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: width=320 height=396 depth=32

 

URLs

 

• Q: How do you launch Youtube?

 

• A: Any youtube.com URL will automatically launch the Youtube app unless the URL contains a "&" ... which is probably a bug.

 

• Q: 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: Does the iPhone support the 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?

 

• A: Inputting "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.

 

Web Browsing

 

• Q: Where are bookmarks sync'ed to?

 

• A: On the Macintosh they are sync'ed to Safari, and though .Mac to other macintoshes. We don't know where they are sync'ed to on the PC.

 

• 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: They are in the background running. You can actually see each of them loading in thumbnail view, too. ... This differs. For example, when the iPhone has been turned off, pages are "blank" until the user opens them up again. The list of pages is actually full of white pages, but URLs are preserved.

 

• 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: No. Not implemented.

 

• Q: Is there any way we can turn on caching on the browser?

 

• A: Caching appears a lot more limited on the iPhone than on regular browsers, but it is regardless there, as is evidenced by the presence of a "Clear Cache" button in the Safari settings. http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/settings.html (near bottom)

 

• Q: Safari on the iPhone does not remember passwords or save cookies. Is there a workaround? Please elaborate. After a reboot of the iPhone I am still able to access a site I saved a cookie for without having to submit my credentials again.

 

• A: See http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/cookies.html for (working) example of cookies on iPhone. Tested after shutting iPhone off (not just locking) and it appears functional. Remembering passwords is another story, but may be an implementation choice by Apple, as the device is after all 1) small, 2) not password-protected in locked-mode, and thus if stolen, it would be problematic if the thief were able to log into your bank account.

 

Wish List

 

• Q: Scientific calculator with unit conversions.

 

• Q: Voice recorder.

 

• Q: Tivo desktop.

 

• Q: Finance program.