We finally had a bit of a break this weekend to fiddle around with the mobile Android OS (version 2.1). The 2D ChemDoodle Web Components display very well in the Browser app (images below). Animations worked as well. The only issue was the limited selection of fonts. And of course, mouse and keyboard gestures are not yet passed to the components from the Browser app. This mouse gesture issue seems to be the biggest hurdle to overcome, but we are actively investigating solutions, and I am sure the mobile browsers will extend this functionality eventually.

iPhone OS for the iPhone and iPad still suffers from some HTML5 text rendering issues. The newly released Opera Mini for iPhone OS does not render text either. We will test with them again as iPhone OS 4.0 matures.

We haven’t forgotten about tablet based sketchers and ELNs. Even though the iPhone and iPad don’t support Java, we are working on our other portable technology, ChemDoodle Web Components which are based on HTML5. HTML5 is already well supported on these mobile devices and will eventually be fully supported by iPhone, iPad and Android devices. We are excited to see this technology advance as we will be working on an ELN as soon as ChemDoodle 3 is released.