AdLib: Apple's secret web app weapon

The full source code and a demo of the User Guide that works in any browser is available at http://www.gregsrumors.com

If like me you don't have your iPad yet because you live outsite the US, you can still play with it on safari for desktop so you can ready when you get your hands on it later this month. All you have to do is pointing your browser to http://help.apple.com/ipad/mobile/interface/, but be sure to set your user agent in safari to Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16

Best,

Actually you're all wrong.

iAd is powered by objective-c framework called AdLib.framework

AdLib.framework is really no different than quattro or admob or any other ad network except its bundled into the os.

All the magic and cool stuff you saw during the keynote was html5 and nothing in iAd powers this.

This pastrykit stuff has been doable for a while, and there are solutions out there to do the same things.(mootouch, jQtouch, etc)

Most people are confused thinking apple has some magic tool to output these awesome ads like the toy story one when thats not the case, and they even hinted in the keynote they don't plan to supply this.

The major reason why "mobile ads suck" is because apple has never allowed inline audio and video into their webkit builds on iphoneOS. It is now available in ipad 3.2 and thats how you can watch youtube videos inline without launching some obtrusive fullscreen video player. Its also why you have never noticed annoying background sounds playing on websites.

Its kind of funny(maybe not for ad networks) that apple has included inline media in webkit and built an ad solution and unveiled it to the public at the same time. Kind of unfair to current ad networks saying "mobile ads suck" when they couldn't pull this stuff off with what apple limited webkit to do.

These rich media ads could be available right now on admob or any other ad networks as long as they designed the html page that loaded to be as awesome as that toystory one(which would probably cost you $30k to have built from an ad agency). And ad networks will move in that direction and most likely go even higher on the scale with pushing html5 and js to its limits.

Also to be clear, at this time AdLib.framework has nothing to do with Pastrykit and any of this stuff that has adlib bundled into its naming conventions.

It is very possible pastykit is bundled onto os and you can link to it in your html ads but even if its not, its only ***kb of extra data to push down with your ad.

AdLib is the library Apple developed to enable native-app-like performance from for iAd. Remember the ads Steve demoed, how he said they were all done in HTML5, yet they were incredibly smooth and included widgets like native Google Maps? They've obviously just used it to make the user guide feel more like a native app.

Anyone dumped this into a zip yet? Care to share the template with us?

Setting it as a home screen icon, at least for the iPod touch, turns it into a complete web app. There's no address bar, and it has its own icon art.

Actually, AdLib seems to be some sort of an enhanced version of PastryKit.

And, no Aaron, AdLib and iAd are two different things.

Ummm, AdLib is Apple's library for iAds.

That's all it is. Since it's all HTML5-y, this same library could also be used for other web app stuff.

Good lord, TUAW - where have you been all these years? This is ANCIENT news. Apple's been using this custom framework for years with the iPhone user guide and other web apps. It's known as "Pastrykit." Do a Google search, mmkay?

You mean this is just like what Palm provides in webOS - the ability to access native APIs through HTML5, CSS & Javascript.

Nothing new here...