The jQuery Mobile was first introduced in to the market around three years ago. It comes fully equipped with Web Matrix; this allows the phone to be used in making applications for cell phones and for desktops. The library that it comes with just contains the initial things and is need of updating. But as a first initiative this experience can be labeled nothing less than exciting.
The jQuery Mobile library and the core jQuery library work in sync with each other where the mobile library takes dominance during application building. In the Alpha module the jQuery mobile library allows the applications to be designed in a similar manner as the iOS applications are. It needs the help of both CSS3 and HTML 5 custom data; this means you would have to use a browser that supports HTML 5 completely. This means under no circumstance can Internet Explorer 8 and those released previously can be used for this task.
JQuery has provided people with a document in which they state the degree of help support that each browser tends to offer the applications. But if you want to test your applications, you can use the enlisted the browsers:
- Firefox
- Safari
- Google Chrome
- Opera
Emulators like iBBDemo2 (an application based on Adobe Air) can also be used. IE9, which has been labeled as beta can also be used. IE8 has been used very largely for debugging websites.
The mobile application that you will design using jQuery Mobile will not run in any browser that does not support HTML 5 or CSS3. IE8 comes equipped with the ability to show compilation and/or run time error messages.
The jQuery Mobile Library contains files that run on JavaScript formats. These files need jQuery Core, a style sheet and few images. The library can be downloaded in zip form from the jQuery Mobile site and it places jquery.mobile-1.0a2.min.js in the mobile as a new folder that you name. The new core library can also be downloaded in a similar manner. The images associated with these can also be downloaded in a new folder that can be named images just for convenience.
Keeping all that in mind, it would be an understatement to believe that the jQuery mobile is now in the top leagues in the world of application development. There is still a lot of room for improvements and polishing. It still has a long way to go before it becomes user friendly.
Web developers have found that it is not well supported on all browsers. But even in its initial stage it provides web developers with a very efficient UI framework that can be used to develop mobile responsive websites that can be accessed from different platforms easily.
All in all this is a nice initiative, which is likely to undergo a series of serious improvements in the coming months. If the developers can fix the support problems and other minor problems it can become the most sought after platform for developers to develop responsive websites.
