A page of notes from Apple’s Developing Web Sites for iPhone session from WWDC has provided more information (article has since been removed) into the exact capabilities of the handset’s build of the Safari web browser. The notes, published on the University of Washington Emerging Technology blog, confirm that the iPhone will not support Flash or Java at launch. In addition, the notes include lists of features and suggestions for iPhone web development, which we have summarized below.
The iPhone’s build of Safari supports the latest in web standards, including HTML 5. The maximum size of any web page is 10MB, Javascript is limited to 5 seconds of run time, and only eight documents can be loaded at any one time. QuickTime is used for audio and video.
Pages do not need special coding to take advantage of iPhone features such as double tap to zoom in, pinching to zoom out, phone number linking, and Google Map linking. If encoding movies for the iPhone, Apple recommends H.264 baseline profile level 3.0, at a resolution of up to 640×480. iPhone media playback requires byte range support from the http server.
