JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

http://jquerymobile.com/2010/08/announcing-the-jquery-mobile-project/

by crescendo • 16 years ago

312 55 16 years ago

jmtame3• 16 years ago

just to clarify--there's nothing that can be downloaded and used right now, correct? it looks like this is a pre-announcement of something they're building.

adolph• 16 years ago

Looks like a call to join the community.

RedWolves• 16 years ago

Correct, we are posting publicly our strategy and plans for mobile and plan to have a mobile jQuery version out later this year.

jeresig4• 16 years ago

Yep - that's correct. Since jQuery is a completely community-driven project and funded entirely by donations we wanted to open up right away to bring more people in. While we're rather confident in the direction that we're heading - doing it in a completely open manner is much more inline with what the jQuery project typically does.

jmtame3• 16 years ago

thanks. i'm actually really glad to see you guys taking the lead on this initiative. jqtouch and sencha both have their shortcomings, but it sounds like this is addressing all of those (polished UI, easy to pick up, well-documented, cross-platform/cross-device).

jeresig4• 16 years ago

To preempt a few questions that are bound to pop up:

What about jQTouch? While jQTouch is a great framework and we're proud to have it as part of the jQuery community - we really wanted a mobile framework to exist that would truly support all the mobile platforms out there. We chatted with the jQTouch team and there wasn't really any interest on their end to head in that direction. It's obviously going to be a ton of work - but that's something that the jQuery project is very interested in tackling.

Is this a response to Sencha Touch? We've actually been working on jQuery mobile for a while now - long before Sencha Touch was released/announced. We're not particularly concerned with Sencha Touch mostly for the same reason that we're building an alternative to jQTouch: We want to support more platforms and do it in a completely seamless way.

What data did you use to choose the browsers that you did? We've been talking with a number of mobile analytics firms and large corporations, gathering data, and will be releasing a bunch of the reliable numbers that we've collected on the jQuery mobile blog. Right now we're confident in the browsers and versions that we've chosen - although that'll likely change over the next couple months as the market shifts.

raganwald5• 16 years ago

While I laud your transparency, I lament the chilling effect this will have on existing libraries like JQTouch. jQuery Mobile isn't available today but this announcement will make a lot of people sit on their hands waiting to see how things play out in the hope that they won't invest in a dead-end platform.

Oh well, not saying you shouldn't have chosen this path, just pointing out the consequences...

jeresig4• 16 years ago

jQTouch has been out for a couple years at this point - a two month "chill" period before release seems totally appropriate.

Honestly, I don't see the "chill" as being a bad thing in this regard: jQTouch and Sencha Touch are doing mobile web development a great disservice by only supporting the latest-and-greatest WebKit platforms. If we can get developers to actually think about supporting more of the mobile platforms that are actually used then I will consider the project to be a victory.

I discuss this much more in our strategy outline: http://jquerymobile.com/strategy/

voidfiles• 16 years ago

Besides what jresig has already said, it's okay for there to be many answers to the same question. It's just like having two open source rendering engines, at least, Mozilla, and Webkit, that don't cannibalize one another. I don't think two approaches to mobile using jQuery will cannibalize one another.

detst3• 16 years ago

Since the first commit of jQTouch on GitHub in June, there doesn't seem to be much going on and every commit has come from one person. So I don't think you have to worry too much about that.

I wanted to like it but there just didn't seem to be much going on over there. Now that it's part of "Sencha Labs", it seems the focus is now over on Sencha Touch.

While, Sencha Touch is definitely interesting, they still don't appear to have announced pricing. Based on how they license and price their other products, I don't think I'm going to like it.

This announcement is awesome and makes me giddy. There really aren't any good options out there for mobile websites. You basically have to roll your own so this is great news.

Encosia• 16 years ago

jQTouch has a great looking website/demo and was very exciting a year or so ago, but I'll be happy to see a robust alternative. After having used jQTouch to implement iPhone-specific views for a couple sites, I won't use it again.

jQTouch could have preempted the possibility of jQuery Mobile being viable in the first place, but it stagnated instead. The jQuery team can't be blamed for that.

toddheasley2• 16 years ago

Is anybody using jQTouch now (before this announcement)?

ninifat• 16 years ago

To my knowledge jQTouch requires jQuery, which has a annoying loading lag.

JunkDNA• 16 years ago

This is the reason I like to use jQuery: I would never have time to take on all the headaches with supporting some of these platforms. I use jQuery so I don't have to worry about all that stuff and I can get my work done.

mmullany• 16 years ago

Hi John. I work at Sencha. We haven't spoken yet, but I think I have to respond to the "disservice" comment because frankly it seems a little uncharitable (and uncharacteristic of your usual even-handed demeanor) given that Sencha is promoting jQuery use by funding Jonathan Stark's work on jQTouch including work to port jQTouch to Android.

We intend to continue to fund jQTouch work because we want to support all those developers (thousands at least) that have chosen jQTouch (and jQuery) as their platform. We will continue to support jQTouch ports to more phones and more browsers as additional browsers and platforms emerge (like the Blackberry Torch) that can support a minimal rich application experience.

As you've noted in the past, Sencha Touch takes a different approach than what you're planning to do with jQuery Mobile. It's ok to differ, but we wouldn't characterize it as a "disservice". Our belief (right or wrong) is that few people will use applications (and I emphasize that word) unless they can produce experiences that can compete with native. We've had ten years of mobile web sites with static, unresponsive, high latency user experiences that haven't interested or excited people. We want to move on from that.

Today, iOS, Android and the Blackberry Torch can support web apps that compete with native experiences (woohoo!), but by the end of the year, we'll see phones from Nokia (and more from RIM and maybe even some from Microsoft) with good HTML5/CSS3 support and fast processors and GPU's that allow everyone to have rich app experiences regardless of their choice of carrier or their geography. With the rise of $30 HTML5 Android phones from China, we see this as inexorable.

Our two projects are making different assumptions about what will most interest (and excite) end-users. I hope we can maintain an engaged (and polite) discussion as we walk these paths. Feel free to email me, would love to chat more to provide more context around our decisions. We'll also put together a blog post soon on why we're doing what we are.

Look forward to hearing from you.

-- michael

aaronbrethorst• 16 years ago

This is very exciting news, especially knowing that this significantly better-looking theme is coming to desktop JQuery UI. One of my biggest issues with JQuery UI has always been how goofy it looks in comparison to Aristo and Ace (http://www.antipode.ca/2009/themes-sproutcore-vs-cappuccino/)

jmtame3• 16 years ago

the mobile ui elements the jquery team is building is the best i've seen so far. they've done a spectacular job there. i hope that as with jquery themeroller, the ui elements for mobile will be customizable.

jeresig4• 16 years ago

Yep - they're going to be 100% Themeroller-able. It's going to be a bunch of work on our end but the ability to have a unified, good-looking, UI that works across all platforms is just too enticing to ignore.

julianz• 16 years ago

Wow - in Chrome on Windows 7, that Sproutcore sample page uses 40% of one core of an i7 just sitting there doing nothing. Hopefully that doesn't carry over to a mobile Webkit browser as well...

taitems• 16 years ago

Obligatory: http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/482577430/introducing-aristo-...

lyime• 16 years ago

This is great news. I have been working on a client project for a company to replicate the iPhone App Store in webkit (enterprisey)

I have basically had to roll out my own framework with the help of jQtouch and jQuery. It's been a struggle to say the least, especially while trying to recreate some of the UI interactions such as the elastic scroll and animated slides.

Looking forward to contributing to this project.

weixiyen• 16 years ago

How will it compare to jQTouch and sencha touch in terms of file size? Looking forward to it.

jsdalton• 16 years ago

The initial designs look outstanding: http://jquerymobile.com/designs/

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

A bit of iOS's proportions, a bit of WebOS's textures, a bit of Android's color – yet they've managed to keep it looking clean and unified instead of middling or compromised. Outstanding indeed.

newman314• 16 years ago

Maybe it's just me but the inital designs still feel iPhone/iPad centric. The UI/UX for webOS are more gesture-like and I do not see that reflected here as an alternative. However, it's a good start and it is heartening to see that Palm has signed up for this.

Toddparker3• 16 years ago

Thanks for the positive feedback. You nailed what we were going for. Glad people seem to like the direction of the project!

samratjp• 16 years ago

Damn, this should give both SproutCore and Capuccino something to mull over, if not help build better builders.

stevenwei• 16 years ago

This is great news. I had to hack apart jQTouch to get it to degrade more gracefully on non-Webkit browsers, and development seems to have stopped as the devs have moved onto Sencha Touch.

Nice to see that the jQuery team is taking the project on, and I'll be very excited to use it once it is released.

pkulak• 16 years ago

The design shots hint that you are going to have toolbars locked to the bottom of the screen. In Webkit that's impossible to do without taking control of everything yourself (including scrolling) ala Pastry Kit. Is that really what you guys intend to do, or is that just an over achieving mockup?

Toddparker3• 16 years ago

It's definitely a goal to support fixed toolbars but we're still looking at how to achieve this cross platform in a lightweight way because these can be pretty heavy. We may end up offering a lightweight version that fades/glides in on scroll like the GMail floaty and hooks to support any scrolling fakery script you choose. Looking for input and ideas since were still at the R&D stage!

wenbert• 16 years ago

I feel that I owe John Resig a lot.

flog• 16 years ago

Does anyone know if there's any source code in a public repo at the moment? I've been asked to present a talk on this, and would like to get in early.

jQueryNinja• 16 years ago

According to this post here http://jquery-howto.blogspot.com/2010/08/jquery-mobile.html it is not available right now and will be available in October 2010.

JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

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