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JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

jquerymobile.com

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Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#31

Post by raganwald »

jeresig wrote: post #11
raganwald wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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 platfor…

Well it's your call to make and I'm not going to second-guess you on it. Good luck with the project, as you probably know I'm a jQuery fan and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Naturally, I expect to see into, tap, ergo and when in the jQuery core as well...

http://github.com/raganwald/jQuery-Combinators

;-)

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#32

Post by pkulak »

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?

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#34

Post by detst »

raganwald wrote: post #9
jeresig wrote: post #3

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…

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...

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.

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#35

Post by Toddparker »

pkulak wrote: post #32

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?

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!

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#36

Post by patrickaljord »

mixmax wrote: post #30
armandososa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respecy John, I think we all should focus only on the latest-and-greatest WebKit platforms or on platforms that are comparably good. Mobile development is exciting precisely because it's a road to the future. Look at the place we are in desktop web development because we have to support old browser. We are stuck 7+ years in the past. I understand the intellectual allure of writing a framework that suppor…

Jquery mobile is great because they will try to support as many platforms as possible. If you run a real mobile site with a lot of users you have to take small platforms into consideration, just like your website needs to support IE 6 if you have lots of users. It's not fun but it would be bad business not to do it.[1] If a mobile framework can reach this goal it will make mobile development a heck of a lot easier, a…

Youtube and other google apps don't support IE6, not to mention many other big traffic web apps and web sites (including 37signals apps).

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#37

Post by Toddparker »

evilhackerdude wrote: post #29
jeresig wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you consider pre-rendering stuff client-side using SVG? I assume adjusting a few parameters in a JSON file is easier than going to a site, pushing buttons and downloading and replacing files.

We're looking into every possible idea we can to shave file size and images down for mobile. Look for very aggressive use of CSS3 that falls back gracefully. We're hoping to eliminate all images (!) or radically reduce their use compared to current ThemeRoller. Using SVG is an option on the table for some elements but I think we'll end up using a TR style tool for this to generate static CSS for performance and compatibility.

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#38

Post by paulirish »

dcurtis wrote: post #21
jeresig wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 platfor…

"jQTouch and Sencha Touch are doing mobile web development a great disservice by only supporting the latest-and-greatest WebKit platforms." How is focusing on the future doing a disservice to anyone? We're at the very beginning of the mobile-optimized web, and the future is still unclear. There's still room to define it. Supporting the equivalent of IE6 on mobile devices seems like a waste of time to me, especially a…

How is focusing on the future doing a disservice to anyone?

Well, you're clearly not serving the present.

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#39

Post by mixmax »

patrickaljord wrote: post #36
mixmax wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jquery mobile is great because they will try to support as many platforms as possible. If you run a real mobile site with a lot of users you have to take small platforms into consideration, just like your website needs to support IE 6 if you have lots of users. It's not fun but it would be bad business not to do it.[1] If a mobile framework can reach this goal it will make mobile development a heck of a lot easier, a…

Youtube and other google apps don't support IE6, not to mention many other big traffic web apps and web sites (including 37signals apps).

IE6 has around 7% marketshare according to this: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Not supporting it is like telling one in fourteen of your customers you don't want their business. This seems like a bad idea, unless of course you have non-financial motives, such as wanting to kill off IE6 by not supporting it and driving it into oblivion.

Re: JQuery Mobile Framework Announced

#40

Post by raganwald »

voidfiles wrote: post #17
raganwald wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

I did not say that there shouldn't be multiple answers to the question, however if you're starting a new project today, you don't have a choice between A and B, you have a choice between something here today and something else promised Real Soon Now. Naturally, the one promised Real Soon Now is extremely shiny, it supports every browser, and it hasn't made any compromises to do so.

This kind of situation forces people to sit on their hands, which means that development stalls for a while. I won't go any further because I'm fighting the urge to compare this to things that have happened in other marketplaces, and I greatly respect John's code and design taste.

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