What is current status of RIA for Mobile Browswers and what solutions are out there?

Question

The heart of any good web app is it's offline capability and JavaScript functionality. Currently what tools and wrappers are availability for the desktop web app maker to cross over to the mobile market? What would be the necessary read ups for such a team?

Clarifications: I am searching for information on how much offline capabilities and JavaScript functionality has improved on the Mobile phones. I know that the term 'mobile phones' are too broad. I am aware of offline solutions like Gears, Adobe AIR, Silverlight etc. But are these really for mobile phones?

How much has JavaScript improved on Mobile Webkit Browsers such as iPhone and Symbians? OperaMini also claims some JavaScript functionality.

Answer 1

I'm not totally sure I understand your question, but you'll probably want to take a look at the iPhone Dev Center and the Google Android SDK to start. Blackberry also has a Development Program. Beyond that, you may want to look into WAP and WML. Google Gears, Adobe Air, and Mozilla's XUL will give you some offline capability, but to my knowledge they won't wrap an existing desktop app and make it available for the web.

Answer 2

The heart of any good web app is it's offline capability and JavaScript functionality.

You are talking about Single Page webapps like GMail right? Then you will probably need a Mashup platform (good starting point here).

I don't know which of these support mobile. Probably none because Javascript support on mobiles is basically zero.

Answer 3

You should take a look at :

http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/05/17/OfflineWebAppsDumbIdeaOrReallyDumbIdea.aspx