iPhone and Android Store Locator Released for WBU
Many companies jump deep into iPhone Application development. It can be a costly endeavor, but not necessarily a required one. iPhone applications only work on the iPhone... doubling your expenses and codebase if you wish to also support Android. There's also the tricky mess of getting your application actually approved.
We decided to take a different route and, instead, develop our enterprise mapping application to support the Safari browser on iPhone (and iPad and iPod) as well as the Android browser.
We utilized an open source Apple User Interface generator that's quite stunning and is open source! The Javascript project utilizes all the additional features of the browser, including swiping, pinching, hiding the address bar and even the ability to drag an application icon directly to your desktop.
By developing it this way, we cut hundreds of development hours off the timeline and actually delivered the project as a value add to the latest upgrades that Wild Birds Unlimited requested.
The application even utilizes the iPhone (or other device's geolocation capabilities and messages the user that they were found. They can then click through and see the closest stores from right where they are standing!
The greatest feature of this application is that it's tied directly to the back-end of the enterprise mapping application. Any updates made to store locations on the web or back-end are also utilized to feed this mobile interface. We're really excited about expanding the functionality of our enterprise mapping application and supporting both iPhone and Android with it.
If you'd like to see the application in action, go to the Wild Birds Unlimited mapping site with your iPhone, iPad, iPod or Android device. The site will automatically detect your device and forward you to the mobile application.
If you're a store or retail outlet and looking for a great mapping solution, we'd love to help you out. This application has been live for several years now and largely bug free (we just updated to the Google Map v3 API and added a few that we've since knocked out!).
