6 ms·

Build native iOS apps with jQuery Mobile

48 points by fogus 16y ago

cageface 16y ago
Learning Obj-C is looking more and more like a poor investment of time. If my repurposed web skills are good enough to build 80% of the apps people want why would I start from scratch with a completely new and native stack?
- dinedal 16y ago
  And if there's something you need you can extend PhoneGap with a plugin (Examples and existing functional plugins: https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins )
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  I've been saying it for some time (I'm not the only one), but JavaScript is the language every developer should be learning. Not the only language, but it's a language you want under your belt. And it's only getting better. How times change. =)
  - cageface 16y ago
    It's ironic, isn't it? Worse is better, confirmed yet again.
    - jasonlotito 16y ago
      I wouldn't say better. I'd say those that thing something else is better are missing out on key elements that made "worse" superior. Basically, the "worse" option is worse in areas that don't matter, and the "better" options are better in areas that don't matter. I'd be more inclined to question those baffled how something is "worse is better." Did they really understand the technological needs?
- Xuzz 16y ago
  I would never use this app. Even just from the screenshots I see that it cannot manage to follow even the most basic of iOS UI principles. Most users might not notice so specifically, but they will notice how unnative it is -- and more than likely dislike that.
- njharman 16y ago
  > If my repurposed web skills are good enough to build 80% of the apps people want why would I start from scratch with a completely new and native stack? Supply and demand. Doing the easy and/or thing everyone else is doing means there is ton of supply, will the demand support it? Will the demand still be there when it's commoditized and outsourced / offshored. Doing the hard and/or thing few other people doing means there is limited supply, will the demand be enough to support decent ROI? That is why learning ObjC / proper mobile development might be worth it. Not saying it is, you'd have to evaluate supply and demand to figure out.
  - cageface 16y ago
    This cuts both ways though. Even today there are a lot more openings for JS people than Obj-C or Android. Either or both of the latter might be confined to a niche in five years but "HTML5" is clearly here to stay.
dinedal 16y ago
PhoneGap certainly speeds mobile development along, and hopefully jQuery Mobile will support Android too, but until then I will stick with PhoneGap+jQuery vanilla.
- jeresig 16y ago
  jQuery Mobile supports Android (amongst many other platforms): http://jquerymobile.com/gbs/ http://jquerymobile.com/gbs/
  - dinedal 16y ago
    Looks like I will be doing some learning then! Thanks!
bluedevil2k 16y ago
I've been working with jQuery Mobile for a week now and it's pretty cool just how quick you can get an app up and running...and most importantly looking great. Granted that's mostly to do with their CSS files. However, I really like how they designed their page navigations - in effect, the app acts as a browser within the browser and animates transitions between pages, auto-generates back buttons, lets you put footers with persistent buttons, all that stuff you've grown used to on phone apps. As people have pointed out here, you can probably create 80% of the apps that your client would request with it and other HTML5 tools, rather than writing native code. Added bonus, it will run on iOS, Android, WebOS, and likely in the future Windows Phone 7.
- marcusbooster 16y ago
  I've also been using jq-mobile, and for the most part I like it, though you can still tell it's an immature project. Most recently I found that I was unable to pass url parameters to a page, which is a pretty big deal for a web app. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but it's the kind of things early adapters will have to deal with.
- kaylarose 16y ago
  "Granted that's mostly to do with their CSS files." I think that will be the #1 contributor to jQuery Mobile's inevitable success. It is just so easy to get working prototypes without having to mess with CSS or anything. Everything is taken care of for you, in a very convention-over-configuration way. I recently built a mobile version of a HUGE web app in 2 days using jQuery mobile. Compared to the earlier mobile prototypes using jQTouch and Sencha Touch that took a month+.
- madhancr 16y ago
  I consider Sencha touch to be currently much better than jquery mobile. Just wanted to mentioned it here.
algore 16y ago
> there is only one HTML page even though the app looks like it has dozens of screens!! Ugh. Really, you guys think this is the future? It's a total perversion of what a URL and a webpage are supposed to be. It's ugly hacks on top of more ugly hacks to produce a substandard experience. An app like this is not hard to produce with Xcode and Obj-C, and it will look feel and work 10x better. It will only get easier as development tools improve, and Xcode and Interface Builder have a ways to go to catch up with Visual Studio. There is a place for web apps and a place for real apps. For many years now countless companies have been investing in shoehorning an app into a webpage, and they don't have much to show for it except buggy javascript and unreliable software. Not even semi-professionals would consider using Google Docs over client-based Word for serious document composition. Or substituting Photoshop with one of the dozens of webapp photo editing tools. It's all cute, but in the end its not practical for real world use. It's unfortunate that so many talented programmers are sucked into this "webapp everything" mindset and devote themselves to crappy products, sometimes simply because they have a personal hangup with Microsoft or Apple. Obviously there are plenty of skilled coders who are making client-based software that's beautiful, useful, and profitable, but client software is still dominated by crap, even on super popular platforms like iOS and especially Android. There are enormous opportunities on the client that have been ignored for a decade. Think about this, today for less than $200 you can have a more powerful computer (more RAM, more storage, more MHz) in your pocket than you could buy for $1000 in 2000. And today's has a phone, a camera, broadband internet, GPS all built in. Not only that, but that same computer is making its way into your TV and car. And what is being done with all that power? Still hacking choppy javascript animations on a document markup language!
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  > Ugh. Really, you guys think this is the future? Yes. So do you, apparently. Here... > There is a place for web apps and a place for real apps. And shoehorning web apps into real apps is bad. While I don't suggest every app should be made into a web app, I also think a lot of "real" apps make no sense outside of being a web app. > Still hacking choppy javascript animations on a document markup language! And yet, these "fake" apps are the most popular apps in the world, preferred by geeks, professionals, and non-technical people alike. I don't see native apps going away, I just less natives apps merely doing something that can already be accomplished online, and usually better.
DeusExMachina 16y ago
I'm getting tired of all this "imagine what you could do" hype. Can you really build a well designed, polished app that people want with these tools? Well, so do it, release the app, make a lot of money and show us how you did it and why it's better than building a native app. As of now I never saw all this promises fulfilled, especially on the iPhone. Otherwise it's just pure speculation. EDIT: spelling and punctuation.
jasongullickson 16y ago
What sets jQuery Mobile apart from the others (jqtouch, etc.) is that it seriously adopts the things that make HTML5 unique as opposed to just Javascript+DOM/CSS/DHTML/etc. For being an "alpha" product, it's quite complete and relatively bug-free (again, for an alpha product). If you have cross-platform aspirations it's hard to argue against the value proposition of going the web app route (and coupling it with something like PhoneGap if you need App Store distribution, etc.). Certainly there are some apps that can't be done this way due to hardware support or other device features that are not accessible via a web app but for the vast majority of the apps being commissioned today this is not the case, and being able to launch on multiple platforms with almost zero additional effort is hard to argue with from a cost perspective. Of course being able to leverage existing knowledge and experience in the HTML realm is another bonus. I have to say also that with the diversity of platforms now available, the "it doesn't feel native" argument is loosing some steam, since what feels native is different on each platform.
ninifat 16y ago
Give it two years for the hardware to catch up, plus some blessing from Apple (instead of the hacky stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString way of talking to Javascript), plus a open-source Javascript framework, then we are talking. But not now.
stuartloxton 16y ago
What does Native really mean in this context? It launches from Dashboard or is it that it's purchasable from the App Store? Being able to save sites to springboard has been possible for years. This isn't using native controls, just HTML and CSS to make it look native. Javascript is a great languages however HTML + CSS were not designed for this purpose, try creating a complex UI in this and watch performance start dropping quickly.

48 points by fogus 16y ago

Learning Obj-C is looking more and more like a poor investment of time. If my repurposed web skills are good enough to build 80% of the apps people want why would I start from scratch with a completely new and native stack?

dinedal 16y ago
And if there's something you need you can extend PhoneGap with a plugin (Examples and existing functional plugins: https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins )
jasonlotito 16y ago
I've been saying it for some time (I'm not the only one), but JavaScript is the language every developer should be learning. Not the only language, but it's a language you want under your belt. And it's only getting better. How times change. =)
- cageface 16y ago
  It's ironic, isn't it? Worse is better, confirmed yet again.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    I wouldn't say better. I'd say those that thing something else is better are missing out on key elements that made "worse" superior. Basically, the "worse" option is worse in areas that don't matter, and the "better" options are better in areas that don't matter. I'd be more inclined to question those baffled how something is "worse is better." Did they really understand the technological needs?
Xuzz 16y ago
I would never use this app. Even just from the screenshots I see that it cannot manage to follow even the most basic of iOS UI principles. Most users might not notice so specifically, but they will notice how unnative it is -- and more than likely dislike that.
njharman 16y ago
> If my repurposed web skills are good enough to build 80% of the apps people want why would I start from scratch with a completely new and native stack? Supply and demand. Doing the easy and/or thing everyone else is doing means there is ton of supply, will the demand support it? Will the demand still be there when it's commoditized and outsourced / offshored. Doing the hard and/or thing few other people doing means there is limited supply, will the demand be enough to support decent ROI? That is why learning ObjC / proper mobile development might be worth it. Not saying it is, you'd have to evaluate supply and demand to figure out.
- cageface 16y ago
  This cuts both ways though. Even today there are a lot more openings for JS people than Obj-C or Android. Either or both of the latter might be confined to a niche in five years but "HTML5" is clearly here to stay.

dinedal 16y ago

PhoneGap certainly speeds mobile development along, and hopefully jQuery Mobile will support Android too, but until then I will stick with PhoneGap+jQuery vanilla.

jeresig 16y ago
jQuery Mobile supports Android (amongst many other platforms): http://jquerymobile.com/gbs/ http://jquerymobile.com/gbs/
- dinedal 16y ago
  Looks like I will be doing some learning then! Thanks!

bluedevil2k 16y ago

I've been working with jQuery Mobile for a week now and it's pretty cool just how quick you can get an app up and running...and most importantly looking great. Granted that's mostly to do with their CSS files. However, I really like how they designed their page navigations - in effect, the app acts as a browser within the browser and animates transitions between pages, auto-generates back buttons, lets you put footers with persistent buttons, all that stuff you've grown used to on phone apps. As people have pointed out here, you can probably create 80% of the apps that your client would request with it and other HTML5 tools, rather than writing native code. Added bonus, it will run on iOS, Android, WebOS, and likely in the future Windows Phone 7.

marcusbooster 16y ago
I've also been using jq-mobile, and for the most part I like it, though you can still tell it's an immature project. Most recently I found that I was unable to pass url parameters to a page, which is a pretty big deal for a web app. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but it's the kind of things early adapters will have to deal with.
kaylarose 16y ago
"Granted that's mostly to do with their CSS files." I think that will be the #1 contributor to jQuery Mobile's inevitable success. It is just so easy to get working prototypes without having to mess with CSS or anything. Everything is taken care of for you, in a very convention-over-configuration way. I recently built a mobile version of a HUGE web app in 2 days using jQuery mobile. Compared to the earlier mobile prototypes using jQTouch and Sencha Touch that took a month+.
madhancr 16y ago
I consider Sencha touch to be currently much better than jquery mobile. Just wanted to mentioned it here.

algore 16y ago

> there is only one HTML page even though the app looks like it has dozens of screens!! Ugh. Really, you guys think this is the future? It's a total perversion of what a URL and a webpage are supposed to be. It's ugly hacks on top of more ugly hacks to produce a substandard experience. An app like this is not hard to produce with Xcode and Obj-C, and it will look feel and work 10x better. It will only get easier as development tools improve, and Xcode and Interface Builder have a ways to go to catch up with Visual Studio. There is a place for web apps and a place for real apps. For many years now countless companies have been investing in shoehorning an app into a webpage, and they don't have much to show for it except buggy javascript and unreliable software. Not even semi-professionals would consider using Google Docs over client-based Word for serious document composition. Or substituting Photoshop with one of the dozens of webapp photo editing tools. It's all cute, but in the end its not practical for real world use. It's unfortunate that so many talented programmers are sucked into this "webapp everything" mindset and devote themselves to crappy products, sometimes simply because they have a personal hangup with Microsoft or Apple. Obviously there are plenty of skilled coders who are making client-based software that's beautiful, useful, and profitable, but client software is still dominated by crap, even on super popular platforms like iOS and especially Android. There are enormous opportunities on the client that have been ignored for a decade. Think about this, today for less than $200 you can have a more powerful computer (more RAM, more storage, more MHz) in your pocket than you could buy for $1000 in 2000. And today's has a phone, a camera, broadband internet, GPS all built in. Not only that, but that same computer is making its way into your TV and car. And what is being done with all that power? Still hacking choppy javascript animations on a document markup language!

jasonlotito 16y ago
> Ugh. Really, you guys think this is the future? Yes. So do you, apparently. Here... > There is a place for web apps and a place for real apps. And shoehorning web apps into real apps is bad. While I don't suggest every app should be made into a web app, I also think a lot of "real" apps make no sense outside of being a web app. > Still hacking choppy javascript animations on a document markup language! And yet, these "fake" apps are the most popular apps in the world, preferred by geeks, professionals, and non-technical people alike. I don't see native apps going away, I just less natives apps merely doing something that can already be accomplished online, and usually better.

DeusExMachina 16y ago

I'm getting tired of all this "imagine what you could do" hype. Can you really build a well designed, polished app that people want with these tools? Well, so do it, release the app, make a lot of money and show us how you did it and why it's better than building a native app. As of now I never saw all this promises fulfilled, especially on the iPhone. Otherwise it's just pure speculation. EDIT: spelling and punctuation.

jasongullickson 16y ago

What sets jQuery Mobile apart from the others (jqtouch, etc.) is that it seriously adopts the things that make HTML5 unique as opposed to just Javascript+DOM/CSS/DHTML/etc. For being an "alpha" product, it's quite complete and relatively bug-free (again, for an alpha product). If you have cross-platform aspirations it's hard to argue against the value proposition of going the web app route (and coupling it with something like PhoneGap if you need App Store distribution, etc.). Certainly there are some apps that can't be done this way due to hardware support or other device features that are not accessible via a web app but for the vast majority of the apps being commissioned today this is not the case, and being able to launch on multiple platforms with almost zero additional effort is hard to argue with from a cost perspective. Of course being able to leverage existing knowledge and experience in the HTML realm is another bonus. I have to say also that with the diversity of platforms now available, the "it doesn't feel native" argument is loosing some steam, since what feels native is different on each platform.

ninifat 16y ago

Give it two years for the hardware to catch up, plus some blessing from Apple (instead of the hacky stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString way of talking to Javascript), plus a open-source Javascript framework, then we are talking. But not now.

stuartloxton 16y ago

What does Native really mean in this context? It launches from Dashboard or is it that it's purchasable from the App Store? Being able to save sites to springboard has been possible for years. This isn't using native controls, just HTML and CSS to make it look native. Javascript is a great languages however HTML + CSS were not designed for this purpose, try creating a complex UI in this and watch performance start dropping quickly.