Cyber-Duck's 6 Week iPad Web App Project

As you know dear reader, I’m firmly in the side of the developer and I’m always interested to hear more from developers working in the mobile space (contact me). So I was excited when I heard about a company called Cyber-Duck that was creating an iPad Web App in just six weeks.

If you don’t know Cyber-Duck, they’re a pioneering digital agency that consults on and delivers a range of exciting web and mobile projects for their clients. I’ve also been told that they’ve got some big projects that they’ll be announcing soon.

But my interest was clearly on the iPad Web App, so I thought I’d get Khaled Weir, the Project Manager (I think his full title is Web Strategist) to tell us more.

Over to Khal.

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Apple’s iPad is an exciting new product, changing the way we use the web and think about computers. The device encourages casual browsing, has excellent support for emerging Web technologies and introduces novel interactions using the large touch screen. Cyber-Duck is at the forefront of web and App design and as soon as the iPad came out we wanted to create exciting new content that utilised the native qualities of the device.

However, it’s not just about the iPad, tablets are set to be a huge market with several major manufacturers releasing a number of different models across the main platforms in the coming months. The browsers included with Android, Blackberry and WebOS platforms currently use the same WebKit rendering engine as the iPad – meaning that any websites developed with the iPad in mind are likely to work well on these new tablets too.

So bearing all of this in mind, Cyber-Duck decided to develop a web app; a stripped- down version of our website serving as an interactive brochure, specifically suited for the iPad using HTML5, CSS3 and the latest JavaScript and SVG techniques … and to truly test ourselves, we decided to do it in just six weeks.

We also embarked upon documenting the development of this project with a Production Diary. Using Tumblr, we post regular, almost daily updates on our progress and the challenges we face creating our first iPad project. You can follow our progress here – http://theduckpad.tumblr.com.

All of this got us noticed by the organisers of C21 Media and we have been invited to present at the iPad Entertainment event on 1st October, where we will be talking about the technical challenge of developing for the iPad and discussing the future of the platform for content publishers and web developers.

It’s an exciting project and we hope to show you the finished results soon.

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Thanks Khal. It sounds exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing it completed.