Apple recently updated its iOS software for iPhones, iPods and iPads. While there were plenty of new features for users (which you can read about on Gadget Lab), the updated version of Mobile Safari has quite a few nice new tricks for web developers.

Mobile Safari has long been at the front of the mobile pack when it comes to HTML5 support, and the latest version adds several more welcome new features. We now get support for WebSockets, better @font-face handling, better HTML5 forms and even support for the bleeding edge DeviceOrientation API — that’s the API that lets you access the accelerometer from inside the browser.

So far it doesn’t appear that Apple has fully documented the new features, but Maximiliano Firtman, the author of Programming the Mobile Web, has been testing the latest version of Mobile Safari and offers a nice overview of what’s new in iOS 4.2.

If you’re developing mobile-optimized site, or just want to play with next generation HTML features like WebSockets, check out Firtman’s overview of what Mobile Safari can and can’t do. If you’d like to see what Android 2.2 is capable of, Firtman has a similar overview of Froyo’s support for HTML5 and its related APIs.

See Also:

• Make a Big Splash on Tiny Screens With Media Queries
• Slide Show Time: Rethinking the Mobile Web
• TinySrc Shrinks Your Images for Mobile Browsers
• New Frameworks Give Mobile-Web Apps a Boost