Thursday, April 28, 2011

Mobile Framework Opinions

I've been doing a lot more mobile specific programming and have tried a few of the frameworks. As you probably already know I'm a huge fan of JQuery and sing it's blessings everywhere I go. I've been trying real hard to embrace JQuery Mobile, but it's been a little bit of a bumpy relationship, but I want to love this offspring of JQuery...

One of the areas in which I find most difficult is not in programming within the framework (although sometimes tricky) itself, but trying to navigate the API documentation, JQuery Mobile is great for mobile interfaces, but for browsing the API (in a real browser) is not really ideal. Don't get me wrong, you guys are doing work of angels, I'm just sayin ;)

I also played with JQTouch at one point, and I found it was less buggy at the time, but from my understanding the product is now sencha touch and need to be licensed for commercial products. (someone let me know what that means/costs?).Sencha looks like a cool product, but I haven't picked it up yet.

I'm really excited to see a JQuery Mobile Beta, from my understanding it will be released soon. I was very excited to see the device support list now including windows7 phones. For now I'm going to stick with developing in JQuery Mobile for devices, and I'm sure over time, I be familiar with all the nuances, but as seen with JQuery I'm sure it will be adopted and supported by the majority of devices and browsers, and with an awesome community to help drive it's development.

I have to give a HUGE thanks to the contributors of both JQuery Mobile and JQuery it's really been a pleasure working with JQuery/JQM. THANK YOU, I really mean it!