idea for a "Webapps" application

[arytbk]

I think it would be great to develop a native iPhone app (appStore based or for Jailbreak phones) that could select, download and run iPhone Web apps locally. I would see it similar to Installer, with sections and lists of available apps. You can then select an app, download it and it would basically download the website structure in a compressed file and store it locally in the iPhone.
The main screen of this app would be a list of installed Webapps and just clicking one will launch it in mobile Safari.
I think this would:

• Make Web apps much more useful by being able to run them offline
• Allow developers to develop local-like apps for the iPhone using the Web app framework which is much easier than the SDK.

[rusty778]

Well its kind of the whole point to develop it for the iPhone using the SDK because you have much more powerful tools and APIs that web apps cannot access. You might as well just go native rather than have a safari emulator

[arytbk]

Well its kind of the whole point to develop it for the iPhone using the SDK because you have much more powerful tools and APIs that web apps cannot access. You might as well just go native rather than have a safari emulator

Sure the SDK allow for much more powerful apps - but the barrier to entry is quite high (get your registration with Apple accepted, pay the fee, learn Objective-C and the SDK...) - on the other side they are already hundreds of nice Web apps which are not used as much as they could because they can't run offline, and a lot of developers with good ideas who would prefer to do a quick web app rather than get into the SDK complexity.

[rusty778]

I think html and AJAX is a little more complex than coca and obj-c, but also Safari isnt a file browser, so you could set up a separate server and then have the files on there then agin that kind of defeats the whole purpose dosnt it?