Editable Web Apps | Sneak Peak

After a couple hundred hours of development, we’re finally wrapping up with the beta version our custom iPad web app. Built using pure HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript, it includes new technologies like SVG graphics, offline capabilities, splash screen start-up, and other HTML5 only goodies. We spent a lot of time crafting the web app to look as native to the iPad as possible, giving a familiar and friendly user interface from swiping to sharing. Well technically it was a team of code monkeys who did all the work. OK so not really monkeys, just one guy with mad skills, and myself who thinks big. So…why build it? A few reasons actually, and if you have a few minutes we’d like to enlighten you.

A tablet revolution is silently starting. 3 million iPads we’re sold in the first 90 days. 10 million will be sold by the end of this year. On Friday the iPad will be released in 9 more countries. In fact as of last month, more people are browsing the web on an iPad than on both Android-powered devices, and Blackberry devices combined. It took the iPad 2 weeks to pass Android in terms of web traffic. This doesn’t mean there are more iPads than Android-deices, it means that a greater percentage of iPad owners browse than web than Android  and Blackberry owners. These folks are surfing the Internet and running into websites that aren’t meant to run on an iPad. Visitors then leave frustrated.

This is a big problem, especially for photographers. Their website is their storefront, and these days we can’t afford to be skipped by the prospect who’s hitting our site from her iPad in Starbucks. This is only the beginning too, as analysts are predicting that tablets will account for 23% of the PC market by 2015. One out of four will be using tablets to shop. This isn’t about flash vs html, this is about giving your visitors the experience they deserve. Flash websites will always have a place on desktops, and will always be great for displaying feature rich websites. In fact SMD specializes in creating flash websites with Showit, and we don’t plan on stopping any time soon. It’s an amazing, versatile, feature rich design platform that after 7500 hours inside the cockpit, we still love it like the day we first started. Mobile websites will always have a place on mobile phones. Tablets deserve websites for tablets, and what we can do with the web and the iPad is amazing. Click is different than touch, and deserves a proper touch-to-toggle interface. Samsung, LG, HP, and Acer have all have publicly stated that they are working on getting tablets into the market, so it’s only a matter of time before your sites traffic explodes with tablet users hungry for tailored fit interfaces.

Is your website ready for visitors on tablets? If not, we can actually help, and it’ll only cost you $0.40 a day. We thought to ourselves, “hey why not make this thing editable for our clients to use?” So starting this fall you’ll be able to do just that. Create an account, log-in, choose a theme whether it be commercial or photography, customize, and publish your very own tablet web app. Just like that, and quicker than it will take you to finish your first cup of coffee. Your visitors hit your main flash website, and are redirected to your iPad web app. Visitors are encouraged to add your app to their home screen, and doing so they will be able to launch it full screen which starts with a custom splash start up image. With HTML5 comes neat things like local caching, so your visitors will be able to launch your web app even without Internet access. Easily swap out images, text, change colors, and turn that “visit” into an “experience.” It’s coming soon, and I hope you’ll join us. Ours isn’t quite ready to share just yet, but she will be soon…very soon.