Developing Mobile App (Iphone,Blackberry,Android) for an existing website

Question

Hey Guys

I have a website and am planning to develop a mobile version of it for the iphone, blackberry and android.

My website is a social network built on PHP Zend framework. Now all these mobile apps are going to be having the same functionality like the website.

I am little ignorant about this - but from a high level I understand that all these mobile apps should not have to write any backend logic. For every functionality - they will simply make a web service API call to interact with the backend.

So does that mean, for every functionality I need to create a web service method. Can the existing code be re used - I'm a little lost -

Can someone shed some light on this matter or point me in the right direction (like some articles)

Thanks

Answer 1

I think the best thing for this kind of application would be write a mobile website. This should not include more than some new views in your Zend framework application.

There are some tutorials out there how to start. Just use your favorite search engine.

Answer 2

Apple and Android have browsers which are very advanced. They actually show the site in total. The point is would your website look better in that interface? ( I bet it would be cumbersome). You would have to make a mobile site (as suggested by @Felix) and implement the required features in a simple interface.

If you want an installable application then you are looking at three applications(one for each platform). My suggestion would be to make the mobile site and look for an app maker kind of product which would install your regular mobile site as an application on these platforms.

HTH

Answer 3

This is a very open subject that's obviously going to divide opinion (as already demonstrated it seems! :))

My personal view on it it this, using Safari on my iPhone is a terrible clunky cumbersome experience and "mobile optimised" websites are not ideal and don't really take advantage of the features of the device you are developing for (i.e. multi-touch etc)

This is why I think mobile applications are more appropriate ways of encapsulating the content of the web and delivering in a format suitable for its platform. Take for example, the Facebook application for iPhone and Android. That's a perfect example of taking the core features of the website and contextualising it in a manner that's easy to use and designed from the ground up for the device it's made for.

In answer to your question then yes, I would approach the development with web services in mind and use these to feedback the relevant data you need to interface with your site

Answer 4

While I agree with djhworld that the native mobile applications are sometimes easier to use than mobile-optimized web apps, there is a pretty big gulf in implementation time and user base fragmentation. I think the best first step is to develop a mobile web application, and if you are getting use there, consider developing native apps using web services. You may also want to look at PhoneGap as a way to cross-compile a single mobile app:

http://phonegap.com/

Also, see my other post about mobile web application development.

Answer 5

If you want to maximize your investment in your mobile site, I would develop it in HTML5. Currently, only WebKit browsers support it (iPhone/iPod/iPad/Android/Blackberry[soon]), but within a year most devices in developed countries will support it.

If you need to detect mobile devices on the server side, I would recommend Tera-WURFL. It is a high-speed PHP & MySQL mobile device detection software package that is free and open source.