
Switching from jQuery Mobile to Twitter Bootstrap - jaynate
http://blog.pamelafox.org/2011/09/switching-from-jquery-mobile-to-twitter.html
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pamelafox
Note: I wrote this nearly a year ago, not sure why it's popped up today. Since
then, both Bootstrap and jQuery Mobile have improved. I encourage you to
consider both options (amongst a host of others, some of which I overviewed in
this talk - <http://mobile-app-strategy.appspot.com/>) and pick what works
best for you. :-)

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aaronbrethorst
Back in January 2011, I built a little website
(<http://www.airportgasfinder.com>) to help people find gas stations near
airports, so they wouldn't have to worry about refueling rental cars on the
way back to the airport. I built it on Rails 3.0, with jQuery Mobile for the
mobile interface.

I let the site go dormant for a while, but resurrected it recently. When I
rebuilt it, I used Bootstrap for the UI and decided to rip out jQM in favor of
Bootstrap's responsive features. It took me a lot less time to build the new
mobile UI, it feels faster and less clunky, and it has reduced my workload
going forward, since I no longer have to maintain parallel sets of views (e.g.
index.html.haml and index.mobile.haml).

I cannot imagine ever using jQM for another project.

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FlukeATX
This is a really neat idea. I'm never sure how close to the airport I should
be to refuel- too far out and it might not be "full" enough for return, but
too close and you might miss the last gas station!

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aaronbrethorst
I got the idea after my girlfriend and I went to Maui for Christmas. I had
never been there before, and had no idea where I should get gas on our way
back to the airport. Like you said, too close and you might miss the last
station. Plus, I was already concerned about missing our flight. The last
thing I needed was the extra stress of watching for gas.

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user602341
Is this really front page because it has 2 buzz words in it? The article is
non-substantive and attempts to compare a mobile app framework with a css
toolkit.

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ojr
Your experience is showing ;)!

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untog
This seems like a superficial dive. JQM has a ton of things Bootstrap doesn't,
like separate pages based around div tags, hierarchical navigation and app-
like transitions between those pages.

Not disagreeing with most of the points raised, but I don't think its the full
story.

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juddlyon
Exactly - these are two different tools with two different purposes. Glad he
could opt for the TBS responsive stuff in this case but it's misleading in
general.

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pamelafox
:%s/he/she :)

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flippyhead
We're contemplating this as well but I'm worried about how many little gotchas
we'll have to rebuild from scratch to get similar support on many different
mobile browsers.

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hnriot
This might work well for a single page site, but one of jqm's features is to
out every page into divs and have the JavaScript deal with the page
transitions. I'm wondering how that would be replicated using bootstrap. I
love bootstrap and it only takes a few minutes to make it look distinctive
from other tb apps. I also love how jqm does much of the tedious work in
building mobile friendly apps.

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pamelafox
@hnriot - I responded to a similar comment above, see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339604>

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dotmanish
You can always use Bootstrap for scaffolding (the grid is the coolest thing),
and use jQM for interface elements and rest of the stuff. They are two
different tools with different goals, just that several bits (or "features")
of them overlap.

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bjthomps
Have you been successful in combining these tools? I am trying to use
bootstrap (or Zurb Foundation for that matter) to accomplish the responsive
layout, and use jQM to achieve swipe functionality, transitions, etc.

The 2 just don't play well together. When I Include all the CSS and JS files
Bootstrap needs to perform all of it's functions, and then include the jQM CSS
and JS file - much of the bootstrap functionality breaks or layouts no longer
look acceptable.

I have been searching everywhere for a working example/solution for combining
jQM's functionality into a truly responsive layout framework! Any guidance
would be appreciated.

