

JQuery Mobile Framework Announced - crescendo
http://jquerymobile.com/2010/08/announcing-the-jquery-mobile-project/

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jeresig
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.

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raganwald
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...

~~~
jeresig
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/>

~~~
dcurtis
_"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 after we've just spent a
decade watching the evolution of the desktop web be stunted by obsessive focus
on backwards/cross compatibility.

Also, nearly all major device manufacturers have committed to using WebKit. In
five years, how many mobile devices will _not_ run WebKit? If Windows Phone 7
isn't dead by then, it might be the only one.

~~~
mrkurt
I don't really relish a future where one browser engine dominates the way IE
has in the past. I fully expect and hope for more viable mobile engines.

Even still, jQtouch (at least, I haven't messed with the Sencha thing) is very
iDevice slanted. There's "webkit" and then there's "webkit on iOS", and most
tools are targeted specifically at "webkit on iOS".

~~~
dcurtis
The thing the differentiates WebKit from IE in a good way is that it's
completely open source and it's used and built by several competing companies
working together toward a common goal.

~~~
mrkurt
It's also behind both IE and Firefox in various ways. You're right that it
would be a better dominant engine than IE was, but it's still not as good as
having a nice three way competition for browser share.

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jsdalton
The initial designs look outstanding: <http://jquerymobile.com/designs/>

~~~
mortenjorck
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
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.

~~~
dpio
This is great. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this is going to mesh
with webOS.

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aaronbrethorst
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/>)

~~~
jmtame
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.

~~~
jeresig
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.

~~~
evilhackerdude
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.

~~~
Toddparker
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.

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wenbert
I feel that I owe John Resig a lot.

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

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jmtame
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.

~~~
jeresig
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.

~~~
jmtame
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).

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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?

~~~
Toddparker
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!

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lyime
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.

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stevenwei
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.

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

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flog
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
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.

