It seems like webapps for iPhone and iPad are about to get a lot better. There’s always been some skepticism about web applications having the same quality of native apps, and despite amazing tools like JQTouch and such, people were right to doubt that webapps can get even near to native applications. But things are about to change, and even if webapps won’t get as good as App Store’s apps, I’m pretty sure we’ll see something interesting coming our way.
Sproutcore, the HTML5 framework to build desktop class web applications, has announced Sproutcore Touch, geared towards the iPad, iPhone and, eventually, Android and Palm. Big news is, Sproutcore Touch will feature complete support for touch events and hardware acceleration, something many bloggers and developers said was impossible to achieve in a web app. For example, the Sproutcore devs claim they’ll be offering support for hardware optimized ScrollView and a UI capable to reconfigure itself based on the device orientation, thus enabling stuff like sidebars and popovers we already see on the iPad.
Whether this may really change the current native / web apps situation or not, I’m sure webapps make more sense on the new device. The Laterstars one, for instance, is great.
