Embedded applications, similar to iAd, on Iphone OS

Question

Apple just announced the iAd platform as part of iPhone OS 4. It essentially is an embedded application with a unified interface where you close the embedded application using a small x in the corner. This is obviously a nice experience for users, that could be used by other advertising platforms or to provide an embedded application such as dictionary service.

While details remains sketchy on the iPhone OS 4 public APIs, I am wondering if expert iPhone developers know whether this functionality can be replicated by third-party ad providers, or others interested in something like an embedded dictionary service. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Something like an embedded app already exists today. If a developer has integrated with the address book you can get full address book functionality including creating new address book entries as well as editing existing entries.

What's required to start the process is a view controller that's presented modally. The user interaction is limited to this new view controller and any other view controllers associated with it. When the user is done (or clicks on the small x in the corner in this case) the modal view controller is dismissed.

The interesting thing here is that the iAd platform presents a very flexible workflow, for lack of a better term, for different types of ads whereas the existing workflow in address book integration, for example, is less flexible and static. This may have to do with internals of the new OS entirely.

Back to your question, an embedded dictionary service would be fairly simple, relatively speaking, to build and is possible with the OS versions shipping today for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices.