JQuery Mobile is a web-based framework that can be used to create web-apps for all kinds of mobile devices. It provides an optimised experience for touch-based smart-phones and tablets, whilst still allowing older devices to access the content. It is supported by the JQuery community.
I've been tinkering with using the JQuery Mobile framework for a few months now. It is currently in an alpha phase but is already very feature rich and follows nice principles of progressive enhancement, and graceful degradation. In addition, I like how the framework uses WAI-ARIA attributes to attach styling and javascript to the DOM elements. This is one way to encourage developers to bake in accessibility from the minute they start writing their first line of HTML.
Other reasons why I like JQuery Mobile:
- It's relatively quick and cheap to create a site that works on multiple mobile devices regardless of whether they have a particular OS (Android, iOS, Symbian, etc.), or a particular screen size (tablet, or small-large smart phone screen)...they just need a browser.
- It helps create a great experience for smart-phone users with newer browsers, but degrades reasonably well for older phones and other devices with less feature-rich browsers (such as the Amazon Kindle browser).
- It supports page transitions, touch gestures such as swipe-left, and various navigation aids out of the box, and allows you to customise these easily.
- It is easy to learn and use because it uses well established web-technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) that you already know or can learn easily from millions of books, blogs, and your peers.
Some considerations:
You can take a JQuery experience native using a framework like PhoneGap, but:
- It is hard / impossible to get the exact native look and feel...you run the risk of falling into the 'uncanny-valley' of an experience that confuses the user by appearing to be native but not behaving quite as expected.
- The above point, and the fact that Apple has deliberately tried to sabotage cross-platform development in the past means that you are more at risk from Apple's approval process than if you were writing in Objective-C.
- JQuery Mobile is probably more suited to allowing a better experience for mobile browsing of content than it is to creating specific apps that use a lot of native features...some of these features can be accessed through PhoneGap, and some can't.
- Similar to the point above, JQuery Mobile allows us to use the web as a platform rather than writing for each platform individually...you wouldn't create a desktop app for your website, but you might create a desktop app for a drawing program. So there are still going to be lots of situations where you need write a native app.
- Remember your team, and support team's skillsets - perhaps they can support an Android device written in Java better than client-side technologies (then again, the opposite may true especially with Objective-C).
