iPhone Web Apps: Cool at first, but ultimately flawed.
So I spent some time reverse engineering Google Reader to discover their underyling API to pull feeds, stories, and subscription information in XML format. Google has not made this API public yet, but it exists.
Then I started the ground work on an iPhone web app: a “prettier” Google Reader. Google Reader on the iPhone is dog slow, and the mobile version is just plain ugly.
As you can see to the right, I got pretty far – locally. Unfortunately Safari on Windows, and Safari on the iPhone implement the “same domain security policy“. Namely, the browser will not make XML requests to sites outside the domain of the currently loaded page. So the iphone app, hosted on staging.npike.net, can not make requests to www.google.com for needed XML data.
With out this, a web app for this purpose is not possible. There are of course a few work-arounds, but I will investigate them at a later time, because they will be too time consuming to waste any time of my Friday.
I am very disappointed, and extremely angry at Apple for taking this approach for 3rd party development of the iPhone.
Here’s to a frustrating Friday…. :-/
