At the Worldwide Developer Conference this year, Apple announced that it will force all iOS apps to use HTTPS to connect to the Web.
This could have a fairly big impact on the NA community, and the BMLT Community, especially.
A few months ago, I reworked the BMLT to behave properly in SSL/HTTPS (secure Web sites), and with nonstandard ports (a technical term -if you don’t know what it means, don’t worry).
That means that you can run the BMLT on secure sites (ones with “httpS://” prefixes), no problem.
Hosting those sites is a bit more of a challenge, though. Here’s a good blog entry that makes it fairly straightforward and simple.
If you are running an NA site, you may want to consider switching it to HTTPS. I’ll get around to doing that with this site in my copious free time. I already run a test site with SSL.
The biggest issue with running SSL/HTTPS on your site, is that it can be slower. The reasons are a bit technical, but basically, SSL likes browsers to do just one or two things at a time, whereas HTTP allows a whole bunch of simultaneous actions. I’m hoping that changes rapidly as SSL becomes the standard.
The most likely immediate impact on the BMLT could be that the iOS app might stop working. I’m not sure if that will be the case or not. Apple seems to be a bit vague on how they will enforce their edict. They may not allow me to make any updates without SSL, but may allow the current (extremely stable) version to run non-SSL.
More will be revealed…