Creating a basic iPhone page: Links to external apps

At ACU we use Google apps for our email, calendar, chat and documents hosting and so providing mobile apps for the iPhone is just a matter of pointing to those apps. Using Joe Hewitt's css and JavaScript framework for the iPhone, iUI, I have to make the target of the links to "_blank" which will open a new page on the iPhone:

<li><a href=\"https://mail.google.com/a/acu.edu/x/\" target=\"_blank\">Email</a></li>
<li><a href=\"https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/acu.edu/m\" target=\"_blank\">Calendar</a></li>

Do the same thing for other Google apps that are handy for the iPhone:

<li><a href=\"http://www.google.com/uds/samples/iphone/isearch.html\" target=\"_blank\">Google search</a></li>
<li><a href=\"tel:800-466-4411\" target=\"_blank\">800-GOOG-411</a></li>

On the last link, notice the "tel" href type. Even though the iPhone will usually recognize a telephone number, it's good form to include the "tel" in the link.

Finally, there are other great apps out there that will appeal to students on the go:

<li><a href=\"http://iphone.facebook.com\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href=\"http://www.moviesapp.com/?phone=79601\" target=\"_blank\">Movies & Theaters</a></li>

Next, I'll take a look at maps and some of the pros and cons of how iPhone handles custom searches.