280 North’s Atlas Bridges The Gap Between Web Apps And Native iPhone Applications

Atlas won't be the first iPhone app-bridging framework, though easy Cappuccino may make it the most compelling.

John Resig blogged about a few extant frameworks in November: http://ejohn.org/blog/iphone-javascript-apps/ . PhoneGap ( http://phonegap.com/ ) seems like the most capable (though my rating of capability is "number of times I've seen it blogged about"). For those of us with little Objective C and lots of JavaScript experience, these frameworks offer an easy vector to begin developing (basic) iPhone apps.

While I'm wary of the performance cost of what I assume will be a web frame wrapped inside a container with hooks into the iPhone's native environment, the ease with which this might allow development is pretty exciting.

There is a mapping software company that has a similar strategy, though I forget the name.. out of England, I think. Their library is Objective-C, but if you look at the source it is apparent that most of the implementation is actually inside a WebKit window.

hope they are not planning to release an iphone component for rendering/running said content... that would constitute a violation of the "you shall not build interpreters" terms!