Backbase to tailor its SDK for the iPhone -- demos don't work in Safari

Backbase, a company known for its development tools, templates and code snippets, has announced that it intends to "support" the iPhone with its enterprise-level suite. A press release says the company will support "Apple's Web browser for iPhone, Safari 3, and the code-named Leopard operating system," and that the Backbase SDK will "enable developers to bring Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and rich user interfaces to the iPhone." The company provides little detail on its support plans, saying only that it will deliver "Widgets and components" designed to take advantage of iPhone specifications.

The company's offerings include 250 pre-built Widgets and functions, sample applications, and IDE plug-ins for code completion and syntax highlighting. IDE plug-ins are also available for the Eclipse development platform and Adobe Dreamweaver; essentially frameworks that integrate with various Web development tools. These tools make it easy to do things like, say, create a table that can be dynamically reconfigured by the user. Functions can be dragged from the function collection into live code, generating the desired effect -- potentially a major boon for iPhone developers.

Unfortunately, most of the demonstrations currently hosted by Backbase do not work in Safari 3.0 beta for Mac OS X, giving an "unsupported browser" message.