RIT offer a class “Web Application Development for iPhone” and looking to fill my schedule, I’ve been taking it this quarter. Despite my skepticism at the hardware and Apple’s treatment of the platform in general, there is a lot of cool stuff there.

First, arguably the biggest feature, is Dashcode. Although it suffers from poor support and being Mac OS X only (attempts to run it in a virtual machine thus far have failed) the idea and execution is great. It is essentially a visual application builder, not unlike the old FrontPage, and the form builders in Visual Studio, etc. It does a reasonably well job of hiding the web part in web design, coming with pre-built components that match the iPhone look. Output will obviously only work on the iPhone/iPod Touch; not even Safari can run output.

Being able to target only one browser allows you to use much of the cutting edge features. CSS3, HTML5, and the more advanced JS features are all available, along with GPU-accelerated transitions. It is very much a look into the future of what all browsers will eventually support, except with a viable platform available today for immediate development.

Although the mobile web has a lot of hype and buzzwords associated with it, there is some substance to be found. It is pretty exciting to see what the next-generation of browsers will bring as a new standard. With technologies like Adobe Alchemy bringing C++ to Flash, there are certainly exciting times ahead for web applications.