iPhone targeted websites

Question

I have to do a short paper (6-8 pages) (at my collage, I'm a student) on the subject: "Developing web-sites for iPhone".

I have not yet done any work related to mobile browsers, so I am pretty clueless how things work in that department. I don't even have an iPhone :(

Please answer these basic questions (I will be generous in upvoting any good answer).

1. Do web-sites created specifically for an iPhone use the same set of technologies as desktop web-sites (standard HTML 4.01, standard CSS, standard JavaScript), or is there an special language involved?

2. The assistant that gave me the assignment, mentioned 3-4 popular "frameworks" that are used for develping iPhone web-sites? Any idea what those are?

3. Are there any APIs that the iPhone browser implements? (for example, for touch-related events). If so, please supply a link to the API specification.

Answer 1

As an answer to your first question, yes, everything is done with pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Second question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/215390/available-iphone-web-application-javascript-ui-library-frameworks

Third, Yes: http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/07/10/touching-and-gesturing-on-the-iphone/

Answer 2

Complementing what Jacob said

1. You can't use flash (Because Stevie doesn't like it :P) everything has to be CSS2 or CSS3, and HTML 5.
2. One difference that you have to considerer is that viewport is limited (that means 400 someting to 300 something) so you have to add a viewport tag also a tag if you want to allow zooming.
3. The frameworks help you in building a website that looks like a native app (google what a native app looks like). The way they do it is that the use images, css and javascript to simulate movements and stuff like that.