With the use of smart phones steadily growing, developers have become increasingly aware that the future of the Web may very well be in our pockets and purses and not on our desks. This has led to the need for applications that are lightweight and optimized for smaller screens and touch screens.

This year at SXSW Interactive, I attended a jaw-dropping session that explained how to make an iPhone application using only basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Speaker Jonathan Stark, a mobile and web app consultant, began coding in very basic HTML as a class full of developers and designers looked on with feigned interest… it was all code we've written a hundred times before. Then he explained the use of jQuery and jQTouch, JavaScript specifically for use on Apple iPhones and waited for the gasps…

By adding this JavaScript, his simple HTML code was immediately rendered on an iPhone as a really cool looking app: the buttons took on the iPhone format, the touch screen functionality was enabled and animations were activated when moving from one screen to the next. He went on to explain the capabilities of this script as the room sat in amazement.

There are many different ways to build applications, and sometimes you do need more complicated code to achieve more complicated design or function, but the bottom line of the session? "If you can build your app with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then you probably should."

Stark’s discussion is a great example of what we can hope to see for the mobile web’s future: developers working together to dream up new ways to easily bridge the gap between standard web design and mobile devices.