Mike Rundle posted an excellent article covering common iPhone UI Design Patterns that is a must read for anyone looking at designing an interface for an iPhone application.

In addition, an interesting article to check out that covers the details of designing a completely custom interface is here covering the design of Convertbot, which has a very cool non-standard interface.

This great post from Jonathon Tumbling and reposted on a great iPhone development blog by Michael Fey has some great information about standard iPhone graphical UI element sizes.

The following sites have great information about user interface patterns for web development:

• UI Patterns. This site serves as a running catalog of current UI design patterns that is actively maintained.
• Welie.com. This site has great information categorized by function and context (the type of site and intended usage).
• UI Pattern Factory. The UI Pattern Factory has an ultra cool concept that allows patterns to be built and cataloged on the fly.

These and other user interface pattern resources are highlighted in this awesome post by Smashing Magazine. Check that out, because there are other resources listed for CSS-based patterns resources and other cool stuff.

Mobile Web Applications

Mobile web applications (including hybrid applications, which I will write about in an upcoming future post) present their own set of challenges due to decreased screen real estate and the lack of extremely accurate pointing devices (iPhones, Palm Pre, and Google Android only have your finger available as a pointing device). The following resources are important when creating web user interfaces for specific devices:

• Apple Human Interface Design Guide for Web Applications. This is the ultimate source of information for use Mobile Safari as the platform for an iPhone web interface.
• Developing Content for the Palm WebOS Platform.This article talks about the specifics of developing content for the new Palm WebOS platform, which happens to use the same browser, WebKit, as both the Google Android and iPhone platforms.
• Little Springs Design. This site enumerates patterns that apply to most other traditional smart phone devices.

Unfortunately, no guidelines like this exist for Google Android, but it can be assumed that best practices enumerated by both Apple and Palm would apply, since the browser is the same.