iOS 8 Brings Big Boost for Web Programmers

Web Developers rejoice: 8 new iOS Apple has added support for standards that will let you create better games and more productive web sites.

Safari, the built in mobile operating system Apple browser, you can now run the writing Web software to use the WebGL standard for hardware accelerated 3D graphics and IndexedDB standard for storing data that can be used even without a network connection. The first is good for web-based games - can accelerate 2D graphics, too - and the second is good to enjoy tools such as email, word processing, or blog-accounting tools for when people not want to lose work when accessing the network disappears on an airplane or in a tunnel.

iOS, although behind Google's Android market share is still widely used and is a favorite among programmers. Because of that, Apple makes movements are important. That's doubly true for Web standards: the most widely supported a new standard becomes, programmers are free to use it instead of worrying about their software will not work in a browser or another. With iOS having 8 was reached on Wednesday, Apple is catching up with Google here. Chrome for Android and supports WebGL and IndexedDB.

WebGL and IndexedDB are important for the gradual transformation of the Web from a static repository of documents into a foundation for dynamic software and applications. Interestingly, that was the only way programmers can get third party applications on your initial iPhone: Before the arrival of the App Store, the Web was the only open door. But since those early days, Apple has had tremendous success attracting developers to create native applications that run on iOS itself, not the browser.

But not everyone uses iOS. A lot of programmers want something that works on Android, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, BlackBerry OS and other mobile operating system that appears. They are those programmers who will benefit most from the new web standards support in iOS. 8

They benefit in another way, too: plus loading web applications directly in the browser, native iOS applications running outside the browser can use web standards. Many programmers use this approach for creating user interfaces; receiving many of the advantages of cross-packaged Web platform to work more as a native application.

For this approach, Apple previously offered a tool called UIWebView, but iOS 8 introduces a new tool called WKWebView. Not only support the new rules, but lifts a restriction that was in effect UIWebView strangled the JavaScript programming language is at the heart of interactive Web applications.

Apple has also added support for other web standards, according to a count of 8 web enhancements for iOS Sencha, a company that provides tools for developers using programming interfaces to create Web applications.

Among the other standards arriving with iOS 8:

• SPDY, a technology developed by Google that can speed Web page loading. It's not strictly speaking an industry standard, but it's widely used and some of its technology is being built into the HTTP standard that governs communications between Web browsers and Web servers that host Web pages.
• The srcset attribute, part of the solution to letting programmers better handle graphics on high-resolution displays.
• CSS Shapes Level 1, which permits more advanced layouts that combine text and graphic elements.
• SVG Fragment IDs, which will help programmers use vector art for game elements like spaceships or avatars.
• Promises, which helps browsers run multiple tasks at the same time.
• And high-resolution timers, which let programmers carefully test Web page performance.