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This is my first attempt at open sourcing one of my applications so bear with me as I learn the ropes.

Here’s a little info about DashApp:

DashApp is an iPad application that allows you to run multiple iPhone Web Apps simultaneously in a Dashboard-like environment.

Listen to music while you post to Facebook, “Tweet” about a video as you watch or play a game while you listen to a sports broadcast.

DashApp is designed to be very easy to use. Tap anywhere on the screen to add a new application. Arrange your apps by dragging them by their translucent frames. When you’re tired of an app and want to remove it, simply press and hold on the frame until it turns red, then tap the red frame to make the app disappear!

There are hundreds of iPhone Web Apps available and best of all they are free! DashApp provides a list of popular apps that are compatible* with DashApp or you can add your own by typing in a URL.

A demo video of one of the earlier versions of DashApp can been seen here on YouTube.

Let’s be frank;

The code here is rough, much of it was written in a scramble to meet the “day one” submission deadline to be avaliable in the App Store on the first day of the iPad release. I fully intended to improve and clean things up once that deadline was met, but once I got the “rejection call” from Apple I walked away from the code as-is and contemplated my options for a few months.

What you see here is a starting point, the “simplest thing that could possibly work” for a very ambitious system that would promote the awareness of web-apps and increase their usefulness on platforms outside of the phone form factor. I have a laundry list of ideas I’d like to implement (many centered around improving discoverability of apps) but without knowing if there would be a future for the app I put development on hold and pursued other paths.

I’ve released several iPhone apps via the App Store but I’m completely unfamiliar with what alternatives there are (if any) for native apps that are not acceptable to Apple so I am releasing my code here under the GPL to see if there is any interest in the concept outside of the Apple-controlled channels. If there is, I plan to revive development and implement some of the more interesting ideas I have for DashApp. If not hopefully the code can be of some use for reference or inspiration for other developers.