Hark! The useful iPhone Web apps arrive: Word processor, app launcher, games

Let’s face it: most iPhone “applications” developed hitherto have been, for lack of a euphemism, junk. The majority fail to render properly on the device, exhibit poor performance, neglect the fact that fingers are used instead of a mouse, or crash the iPhone’s version of Safari outright. In fact, early experience revealed that most regular Web pages rendered better on the iPhone than those purportedly optimized. But this past week, two cathartic events occurred: Apple published its Web development guidelines for the iPhone, and the iPhone Developers Camp took place at Adobe’s headquarters in San Francisco. The result has been a veritable flood of useful iPhone Web apps, demonstrations of interface functionality and more.

As a side note, it’s becoming clear that (as first discussed by Christopher Allen) there are four classes of Web support for the iPhone:

• iPhone compatible: Sites that just plain work with the iPhone — excludes those that use Flash, SVG or other unsupported plug-ins.
• iPhone friendly: Renders correctly on the iPhone’s screen, generally not requiring excessive zooming — accomplished either with a viewport property or an iPhone-specific stylesheet.
• iPhone optimized: Takes advantage of the special graphic capabilities in Safari (Canvas), other features
• iPhone Web app: Use AJAX to deliver application-level interactivity and functionality while rendering properly on the iPhone.

We tested some of the best new iPhone Web apps and found that developers are genuinely beginning to understand the speed, size and coding limitations of the iPhone and create pages that are functional rather than flashy, useful rather than purely demonstrative.

Notably (some of these applications are only accessible on the iPhone):

Mojits: application launcher for the iPhone organizes links to iPhone Web apps. Allows you to login for saved sets of apps and offers keyword, ratings, and comment capabilities. Beautiful interface that functions similarly to and visually resembles Apple’s Google Maps application for the iPhone. Simply put: probably the best iPhone application yet developed.

gOffice: word processor A very basic, but working word processor for the iPhone that outputs .doc-formatted documents. Let’s you save templates and bits of text, and displays previews of documents on the iPhone as PNG images.

Movies.app — movie showtimes Sliding interface (similar to the iPhone’s iPod function) to movie listings, ratings and showtimes.

Gas.app — find cheap gas Locate the most inexpensive gas in your area; includes Google Maps integration.

TinyBuddy Web IM The best-working, Web-based instant messaging application for the iPhone we know of. Still has some quirks, but actually functions and is optimized for the iPhone screen.

iBrick Tetris: touch-sensitive tetris The first tetris game for the iPhone (we know of) that takes touch input into account. Touch above a falling piece to rotate it, touch to the left or right to move it. A bit awkward, but promising.

Chunk Love — an Amazon interface Simplified interface to Amazon.com designed for the iPhone. Can display categories, show items that have the higest percentage of savings and more.

Spry — Adobe’s Web framework Spry is an Adobe framework for Ajax; a JavaScript library that is intended to make it easier for designers to access dynamic page functionality while performing a minimal amount of programming. At the iPhone Developers Camp, Adobe’s Spry team put together a few nifty demos and some actual Web apps that demonstrate the framework as a viable iPhone development tool. There’s a well-performing poker game, a photo gallery tool somewhat reminiscent of Aperture, and demonstrations of interface elements like sliding panels and tabs.

PickleView — live baseball game tracking Live-updated baseball game information including scores and more, culled from MLB.com. Easy-access menu to select a desired team. Built-in twitter receiver for insight from other fans.

ForeFlight — weather info for pilots Expertly designed interface to Foreflight, subscription-required weather data for pilots. Without a subscription, you can get access to some great doppler radar images sized perfectly for the iPhone’s screen.