The jQTouch Blog

jQTouch Roadmap

Hello all!

A while back, David shared an early version of jQTouch with me and I was blown away by it’s elegance and polish. Even in it’s early form, I could see that it was exactly what I was looking for: a drop-dead simple way for web designers and developers to create compelling mobile apps using their existing skills and tools.

I was so excited by jQTouch and Dave’s vision that I wrote two books on the topic, and I frequently demo jQTouch at conferences around the world. As you might imagine, when Dave asked if I’d be interested in becoming the official maintainer of jQTouch, I jumped at the chance.

There have been a lot of recent announcements surrounding jQTouch and I know that folks have lots of questions. Hopefully the following roadmap will answer these questions and give you a solid idea of what to expect from jQTouch in the future.

Cheers!

Jonathan Stark
@jonathanstark

jQTouch Will Remain MIT Licensed

There are three things you should know about jQTouch licensing:

• jQTouch will remain MIT licensed
• jQTouch will remain MIT licensed
• jQTouch will remain MIT licensed

‘Nuff said.

Staying on jQuery

Some people have said they’d like to see the jQuery dependency removed from jQTouch to decrease the download size. The reasoning is that jQuery has a lot of code dedicated to legacy desktop browsers, and is therefore dead-weight on mobile devices.

We understand this reasoning, but John Resig and the jQuery team are doing a ton of testing and development for mobile browsers. We want jQTouch to benefit from this great work, even if it means that there is some jQuery code that never gets used by jQTouch. All things considered, we think the extra size is worth the cross-platform benefits.

Moving to GitHub

My first act as the maintainer of jQTouch will be to move the code over to GitHub. Baring unforeseen difficulties, I should have this done by the end of this week (Friday, June 25th 2010).

Fix Android

To date, jQTouch support for animations has been fairly borked on Android. My highest development priority is to clean up jQTouch for Android. This means fixing animations where possible, degrading gracefully where necessary, and adding support for optional platform specific theming.

Resolving Issues in Google Code

Dave tells me that there are quite a few tickets in the issue tracker on Google Code. Many are dupes, have fixes, have been fixed, or are just plain confusion. Over the next month or so I’m going to be combing through and resolving everything one way or another.

Small Screens

We have decided to keep jQTouch focused on small screen devices. Apps developed with jQTouch will certainly run fine on iPads and other tablet devices, but we aren’t going to automagically convert to a more tablet-friendly UI that takes advantage of the additional real estate. If you are in need of a JavaScript library that magically updates your UI for everything from small screens, to tablets, to desktops, check out Sencha Touch.

New Theming Engine

The entire theming engine of jQTouch will be rewritten using SASS. This will make it much easier for you to customize existing themes, or to create your own.

Dave Has Veto Power

Although I’ll be maintaining jQTouch on a daily basis, it’s still Dave’s baby. He will remain involved with the strategy and direction of jQTouch, and has ultimate veto power.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone for their ongoing interest in jQTouch. Please keep your feedback coming, and expect lots exciting updates soon. I look forward to seeing your jQTouch apps!