mobile

Mobile Webapps
Web applications provide an easy way of utilizing the capabilities today's advanced smartphones without going through proprietary channels of distribution (like the App Store). We showcased the possibilities with our Roombot sample project.

Contents
Getting Started HTML/CSS Javascript and AJAX Web Servers

Getting Started
While mobile web apps used to be far more limited than your standard web app, current smartphone browsers are just as capable as your desktop's. Standard HTML, CSS, and Javascript techniques still apply, but with a few tweaks customized for mobile devices.

We have set up a Linux machine and a Windows machines that run web servers visible within the rochester.edu domain. All members of the class have administrator rights on these machines. Please read the Custom Server Privilege Guidelines before using them.

HTML/CSS
HTML and CSS are the backbone of the Internet, and you'll need to have a working knowledge of both of these components.

[|Safari Web Content Guide »]
 * Mobile-Specific**

Javascript and AJAX
To simplify Javascript, we highly recommend using the **[|jQuery framework]**.

Web Servers
The //de facto// standard webserver is Apache, which excels at serving static HTML, CSS, and Javascript files. With extensions, it can be modified to run complex applications written in other languages.

However, since you'll need your webserver to interface directly with the machine it's running on, we recommend using [|CherryPy]. URLs are mapped directly to Python functions, so you can execute hardware-specific code with ease. (In our [|Roombot sample project], one such page will actually send serial commands to the robot.) Look through our code and the CherryPy to get started.