If you are interested in Android Development from the perspective of having an application made for you, please visit our home page and then use the contact form; in SEO terms if this has been  'do' user intent when searching. If you want to know more about android devevelopment, please read this page.

This article discusses how the emergence of HTML5 is revolutionizing iphone, android development, and mobile apps for the Blackberry and also Windows Mobile. Since each of these systems has its own proprietary operating system, up until now, development has been a costly affair, and often keeping an app updated even more costly if the original development team are no longer available.

So step up to the plate HTML5. This is the one standard that is consistent on all of these smart phones. It is such a powerful construct, it is capable of delivering full scale applications that do almost anything a native app could do, barring 3D graphics. 

With a little clever trickery behind the scenes, we can make all the native functions such as accelerometer and geolocation available to an HTML5 app and when all these factors are brought together we have a very effective, quick and low cost way of building Apps and Mobile sites for smart phones.

It is the standard designed to replace HTML4, a standard that has guided internet browser implementation since the beginning of the millennium. Combined with CSS 2 and JavaScript, these three foundation pillars have shaped websites over the last ten years.

One key failing of the HTML4 CSS JavaScript holy trinity has been a lack of animation and multimedia integration. Although mootools, and jquery JavaScript libraries address the animation issues to an extent, video has generally only been easily cross browser / cross platform achievable with Flash.

So step aside the old and welcome the new. It introduces many extensions to the current standards including 

• a far more powerful set of style rules in CSS3
• in built video and media handling
• the canvas object to handle drawing, and display requirements

In addition to filling the hole currently patched by Adobe Flash technology, it introduces a whole new set of features in it own right including

• session storage
• local data storage
• SQL data storage

This combination of tools firmly sets it up as an application development platform, although even with the addition of this enormous client side toolset, a server side platform of some description (php, .net or java) will almost certainly be needed to create a complete application.

So if all this sounds great is there a catch. Well unfortunately there is. Most of the older browsers, do not use the standard, and so a site coded in HTML5 will only function on the latest versions of Safari, Opera or Firefox 4. Internet explorer 9 has partial implementation of the new standards.

But wait, before you stop reading this article and close your browser, there is a world where HTML5 is fully working. That is the world of smartphone such as IOS, blackberry and Android based phones.

Perhaps even more importantly it is the one standard that binds these disparate technologies together. Thus mobile sites coded in this, can enjoy many of the new features and work on different handsets.

Mobile websites are all well and good, but the technology does not end there. With the use of compilers such as adAPPt, Titanium and Phonegap. HTML5 applications can be cross compiled into IOS (iPhone), Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile, allowing easy Android Development.

So whilst it may not be taking the world of desktop browsing by storm, it has completely revolutionised the world of mobile app development. Not only does it provide a very cost effective way to develop cross platform, but it also dramatically reduces the cost of maintaining apps in the future. 

In writing this article, we would like to credit the amazingly wonderful android developers at www.adappt.co.uk who have helped us with technical information and contributed jointly to the Drupal phonegap opensource module. What these guys do not know about mobile development is not worth knowing, and we would highly recommend them for any complex mobile development.