So some of you out there might be wondering why I built a web app for Habari instead of a full fledged iPhone app as did WordPress.

I had considered doing just that when I began this journey, but quickly decided against it. After some time thinking about it, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to create what amounts to an alternate mobile admin as a native app. There is very little, if anything, to be gained from doing that. On the contrary there is much more to gain by making something like this into a well designed web app.

As has already been demonstrated, this plugin works on iPhone, iPod Touch, the Palm webOS and Android phones. In the case of Apple and Android powered phones, this app will look and feel much like a native app. The extras present in webkit really give the developer a great deal of power to make polished, desktop class applications. The bonus for the iPhone is that you can set it as an "application" on your phone and the mobile admin will look and feel like a native app, not a web app running in Safari.

I remember when Jobs was extolling the virtues of building web apps for the iPhone before there was a native SDK. I laughed with the rest of the world at his silliness. How could a web app ever stack up against an app built with the native toolkit. After this experience, I would say it stacks up nicely. As time goes on and more hooks are opened up into the bowels of the iPhone building web apps will be more and more appealing.

The future looks very interesting, especially with the iPad on the horizon. Oh, and I wrote this with the Mobile Admin. It was lovely.