Pathfinder Announces Noel Rappin’s “Developing iPhone Applications using Ruby on Rails and Eclipse,” is Now Available on IBM’s developerWorks Site

(Chicago, IL) Pathfinder, a leading software development and user experience design firm, announced ‘Developing iPhone applications using Ruby on Rails and Eclipse, Part 3: Developing advanced views for iPhone’ by Pathfinder’s Noel Rappin is now available at IBM’s developerWorks site.

“Due to the iPhone’s popularity, Mobile Safari has quickly become the most commonly used mobile web browser in the United States, and it’s market share continues to increase”, stated Noel Rappin, author of ‘Professional Ruby on Rails’ and Pathfinder’s Vice President of Rails Development. “Many developers are choosing to redesign their sites to take advantage of the unique features and user model provided by the iPhone and iPod touch.”

Part 3 is the final article in this series, and focuses on what to do when a user reaches the end of the list structure and the best way to display content. It also covers additional features designed to give applications some extra polish, such as capturing the user’s rotation of the phone and adding an icon to display on the iPhone’s home screen.

The articles are designed to help developers leverage Mobile Safari’s new paradigm for web browsing that utilizes the iPhone’s popular touch screen display along with new styles of interactions that include tap, pinch and zoom for bringing the content into view. Included are several examples, source code, and resources needed to build dynamic Ruby on Rails applications.

Noel Rappin is a Ruby on Rails expert and has authored “Professional Ruby on Rails”. He builds Rails applications for a variety of Pathfinder clients and is a regular contributor to the Agile Ajax blog. Noel also participates in open source projects and has recently created the Rails-iUI plug-in which is a Rails wrapper that leverages the iUI toolkit for building iPhone enabled web applications.

“It’s been an exciting year for the iPhone and iPod touch. Even as the 2.0 version adds third-party native applications, the need for iPhone-enabled Web applications will only grow”, said Rappin. “The iUI toolkit and the rails_iui plug-in will continue to make it easy for any developer to make their Mobile Safari application look great.”

Currently the plug-in focuses on automating common tasks and streamlining development. Future enhancements include improvements in documentation, testing and leveraging the Rails framework to enhance interactions, especially related to history and back behavior.

For more detailed information or to download the plug-in, visit: Rails Plug-in for the iPhone

About Pathfinder Development

Pathfinder is a consulting firm specializing in software development and user experience design. Pathfinder delivers applications that are easy to use, providing clients with the technology to enable business breakthroughs and competitive advantage. Pathfinder’s clients range from early stage start-ups to Fortune 5 companies across a wide array of industries, including energy, healthcare, insurance, financial services, media and publishing. For more information contact Pathfinder at 312-372-1058 or info@pathf.com, or visit http://www.pathf.com.