Recent launch of the jQuery Mobile project clearly reflects the current situation on the mobile web market – big companies are starting huge campaigns and interesting projects to snatch what promises to be one hell of a piece of a pie. So what does really stand behind whole this jQuery Mobile thing? jQuery team decided to set the stakes high and create touch-optimized web framework for smartphones and tablets.
These guys want to implement the brilliant idea of creating one interface that will allow developing of mobile applications running in HTML browsers. It means that now developers can create application that will work peoperly on any popular mobile device.
Here is what John Resig says about their project:
“The mobile web is desperately in need of a framework that is capable of working across all browsers, allowing developers to build truly mobile web sites. We’re doing all we can to ensure that jQuery Mobile fills that need.”
Curtsey to Developers?
You’ll agree that existence of such a highly demanded framework will make developers really happy. Here is a couple of advantages that will conquer the whimsical developers audience:
- “write less, do more” (all apps will look same at most of mobile platforms that will save a lot of time and efforts for developers)
- functionality (jQuery team promises to provide tools that will include both layouts and a rich set of form controls.)
- visual attractiveness (will support CSS3 features and many more)
- light weight (needless to remind the importance of this feature for the mobile web)
Cross browser/OS compatibility
We’ve decided to mark out this point because this important feature shows the main idea of creating this framework – it is aimed at supporting all popular browsers and OS’ s.
Key:
A. High Quality. A high quality browser with notable market share. A must-target for a mobile web developer.
B Medium Quality. Either a lower quality browser with high market share or a high quality browser with low market share. Depending upon your capabilities you should work to support these browsers, as well.
C Low Quality. Typically an extremely low quality browser with high market share. Generally not capable of running modern JavaScript or DOM code.
F Failing. A barely-functioning browser. Even though it has some market share you should avoid developing for it completely.
Upcoming browser. This browser is not yet released but is in alpha/beta testing.
Another turn in Anti-Flash Campaign?
We should remind that Flash has a lot of disadvantages that are really important for the mobile web:
- weak browser compatibility
- high price for the Flash software
- backward compatibility
- huge file sizes
While jQuery can position all these points as their important advantages, with all this being said about jQuery Mobile, it is now obvious that Flash will face certain problems in the nearest future (the release of the jQuery Mobile framework is scheduled for the end of 2010). In general jQuery Mobile project is a huge step in the development of cross-platform frameworks while Flash remains the ditched technology #1. Also we should keep in a mind that jQuery is a cornerstone for the different HTML5 graphics experiments with canvas tag which will make the release of future framework a really significant event for the mobile web audience and web developers community.
It seems that you may be interested in 20 Free Website Templates with jQuery that you can also find in a post at our blog.
Besides. our partners from TemplateMonster have recently published an article exploring the most conspicuous mobile web design trends for 2011. You might be interested to have a look at them and find some graphic approaches to consider for your custom mobile designs.
