Constant Contact Labs Developer Blog

• QuickView Web: Coming soon for iPhone, Android, Palm and more Posted Monday, July 26, 2010 Jim Garretson 1 Comment

  
  Labs is excited to present QuickView Web, a third entry in the QuickView family of mobile Constant Contact applications. QuickView Web is a mobile web app - an application delivered through the web browser, but with the look, feel and functionality of a native app. It’s intended to be compatible with any WebKit-powered mobile browser, including iOS, Android, Palm, and this fall’s new Blackberry and Symbian devices.

  Read on for more info, including a chance to help us beta test!

  
  
  

  The State of Mobile Web

  It’s been an awfully interesting six months for the mobile web. The US’ top two mobile devices for web usage, iPhone and Android, continue to battle for browser supremacy in both speed and features. Research In Motion is working towards an impressive new browser for Blackberry OS 6.0. Heck, even Symbian S60 is working on a new browser.

  But most interestingly of all, these browsers are now all based off of the same layout engine: WebKit. Originally developed as part of the KDE project, WebKit came into existence when Apple forked KHTML in 2002. Since then, it’s become broadly popular for its efficiency, architecture, portability, and feature set. Its popularity has actually grown so rapidly that it could be realistically argued that, for mobile devices, WebKit has become the standard.

  Of course, as any web developer knows, the great thing about standards is that there are so many of them - and that’s certainly still true for the mobile web. There’s Blackberry’s proprietary current browser (“Mango”), Firefox Mobile, and of course Internet Explorer Mobile. All of these have, and will continue to have, significant mindshare - so they can’t be ignored. But at the same time, anyone looking to provide a great mobile web experience across all of today’s most popular smartphones would certainly do well by starting with WebKit.

  You may see where this is going.

  
  
  

  Mobilize

  Labs has already developed two great ways to keep tabs on your Constant Contact account from the road: QuickView for iPhone and the QuickView for Android Project. Both of these apps deliver native, OS-specific experiences and their success has helped us to understand how Constant Contact can work within the tight constraints of the mobile world.

  But with this success came a new problem: how can we bring a great mobile experience to all of our customers? We can’t realistically develop and maintain apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile (old), Windows Mobile (new), Symbian, and Brew, can we? We need to standardize.

  We need a common platform.

  Hmm.

  
  
  

  Announcing QuickView Web

  Labs is pleased to announce QuickView Web, a mobile web version of QuickView accessible from any WebKit-powered mobile device. It’ll run in your device’s web browser and deliver the same features that QuickView for iPhone already does - no installation required.

  Below are some example screenshots of an early build of QuickView Web running on iOS (iPhone), Android, and Palm Pre. Note that QuickView Web is still under development, so these aren’t necessarily representative of the final product!

  QuickView Web on iOS 4.0

  

  
  
  

  QuickView Web on Android 2.2

  

  
  
  

  QuickView Web on Palm Pre (webOS 1.4.5)

  

  
  
  

  We’re really excited about the possibilities for QuicKView Web! We think it’ll be a great way to bring a mobile Constant Contact experience to a lot of popular devices.

  
  

  Help Us Test!

  QuickView Web is coming along nicely, but it’s far from complete. If you’d like to help us beta test QuickView Web, we’d love the help! If you’re a current Constant Contact customer and you have an iPhone, Android, or Palm webOS device, please join our QuickView Web beta mailing list. We’ll be in touch!

   

  The opinions expressed here represent those of the author and not those of Constant Contact, Inc. Read Blog Terms

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  Android • Apps • iPad • Iphone • Mobile • Platforms • QuickView for Android • Web Development
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Comments (1) +comment on this post

 

• Jason | 8:16 AM July 27, 2010

  I can’t wait to see how things comes out!

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