The jQTouch Blog

iOS5 scrolling

9-bits — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:40:28 -0800

iOS5 introduced a new CSS property for allowing sections of content to be fluidly scrolled. We’ve integrated this into jQTouch and made it even easier: Just add a class of .scroll onto your element, and it will vertically flex (so items around the div, like .toolbar are automatically pushed to the top/bottom) and become scrollable.

Because this is an experimental feature, it can be disabled by setting useTouchScroll: false in the initialization options.

One of the biggest goals of the release was simply reduced file...

9-bits — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:19:06 -0800

One of the biggest goals of the release was simply reduced file size and improved performance. Here’s a quick chart comparing default download size for the previous release of jQTouch (beta 3), the current version of jQuery Mobile, and the upcoming jQTouch beta 4.

Vastly Improved Theming System jQTouch now uses Sass and...

9-bits — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:33:25 -0800

Vastly Improved Theming System

jQTouch now uses Sass and Compass for its theming, making the stylesheets way more maintainable and most importantly, way more flexible. The image above show what I was able to do in a few minutes, just changing a few simple variables. Additionally, we’ve gone through and replaced all of the images with CSS: Even things like the default “carbon fiber” header are created in CSS, so it can shift colors just as easily as the rest of your theme. A special thanks as well to Drew Wilson, whose research helped in creating the CSS-based back button — which again, is built completely in CSS and changes color with the rest of your theme.

You can see the start of the new theming documentation here.

Zepto.js Integration

9-bits — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:31:14 -0800

jQTouch b4 will ship with both Zepto.js and jQuery as framework options. For those who don’t know, Zepto.js is a project by Thomas Fuchs that essentially recreates the jQuery API (dollar sign selector engine, $.ajax, etc.), but optimized for WebKit, our target mobile platform in iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and WebOS. The primary win here is filesize/loading speed — Zepto.js comes in, minified and gzipped, at ~8kb, while jQuery, under the same settings, comes in at about 34.7kb. I’ll post more detailed information on this improvement later, as I go more in depth about loading times. As it provides a similar API to jQuery at a fraction of the weight, Zepto.js will be the default library moving forward.

Get started with jQTouch beta 4

The 12 Hours of jQTouch

9-bits — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:10:37 -0800

For the next 12 hours, I will be posting various bits of information regarding the upcoming release of jQTouch, beta 4. It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper release, but I’ve been secretly toiling for the past few months (alongside Thomas Yip, aka Beedesk), on a whole new release, with some fantastic features and fixes. It’s my goal to wrap up the evening tonight with releasing beta 4 (or at least a release candidate).

If you haven’t tried the recent release yet, you can clone/fork it from GitHub now. The official release will be a .zip download.

"jQTouch is currently the most used Mobile JavaScript library in the top million sites, shortly..."

9-bits — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:51:28 -0800

“jQTouch is currently the most used Mobile JavaScript library in the top million sites, shortly followed by JQuery Mobile, both of which are extensions of JQuery, the most popular JavaScript library used on the web.”

- Mobile Web Technology Report 2011

Soap.com

9-bits — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:18:00 -0700

Soap.com:

Awesome new jQTouch app built by Soap.com, wrapped in a native shell and available in the App Store.

jQTouch Theme: Easily Customizable, Retina Support & CSS3 -...

9-bits — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:48:09 -0800

jQTouch Theme: Easily Customizable, Retina Support & CSS3 - Artspot

When we started designing our next jQTouch application we needed a simple way to try out different color schemes. We used a customized layout from an earlier app, but we really wanted to try some new colors. Changing each individual color, gradient, shadow, etc… was a time consuming task. So we started looking for a better way.

karmcity: I got fed up with the bloated gym apps that were in...

9-bits — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:10:08 -0800

karmcity:

I got fed up with the bloated gym apps that were in the App Store, so I built one that only has the features I need:

An easy way to organize specific exercises into a collection of “workout packs.”

A quick way to record sets and sessions at the gym, storing data for posterity and long-term analysis.

Data storage in a standardized format that will allow me to import into Excel easily, and backup and restore in a pinch.

…and not the features I don’t need:

Videos of how to properly do an exercise.

A pre-populated collection of thousands of exercises I will never do.

A complicated scheduling system.

A diet journal.

It’s called Pump. You can get it here.

It’s built using jQTouch and PhoneGap, which has disappointingly twitchy quasi-native behavior. I’m planning for the next version to be entirely native.

Apple should open its iAd framework to be available for general app creation. Their JavaScript library, PastryKit, feels indistinguishable from a truly native app, but it’s completely undocumented and unsupported.

TWiT5

9-bits — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:46:36 -0700

TWiT5:

Check out the video preview of TWiT5: an unofficial app for TWiT.tv featuring:

Audio netcasts
Netcast episode info
TWiT live
Cover art home screen icons

Direct link to the app.

Rhomobile Announces Rhodes 2.1

9-bits — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:08:30 -0700

Rhomobile Announces Rhodes 2.1:

Now comes with jQTouch pre-included.

Jonathan Stark's OSCON presentation

9-bits — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:36:06 -0700

Jonathan Stark's OSCON presentation:

Includes Jonathan’s slides, downloadable files, and all of the mentioned links.

jQTouch Roadmap

jonathanstark — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:34:00 -0700

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 its 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!

2010 SXSW Interactive Session Ratings

9-bits — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:11:56 -0700

2010 SXSW Interactive Session Ratings:

In at #1 — with a perfect 5/5 — is our new maintainer Jonathan Stark’s presentation, Hold the Cocoa: Building iPhone Apps w/ HTML, CSS & JavaScript..

And with that, dear friends, I hand the proverbial mic over to Jonathan.

jQTouch and Sencha Touch: Which is right for you?

9-bits — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:56:42 -0700

jQTouch and Sencha Touch: Which is right for you?:

Recently I had the pleasure of announcing Sencha Touch, a standards-based mobile app framework which I helped create. As expected, this has raised some questions about jQTouch, a similar library I created last year. As covered before, jQTouch will remain separate, maintained, and free under the MIT license. This post helps distinguish the similarities and differences between the two libraries for the discerning mobile developer.

jQTouch is now a part of Sencha Labs

9-bits — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:41:00 -0700

jQTouch is now a part of Sencha Labs:

The cat’s out of the bag! I was hoping to post something on this later this week, but word has already started spreading and I thought I’d take the opportunity to discuss, in greater detail, what this means. For those who don’t know, I’ve been working at Sencha (previously Ext JS) for about six months now, serving as creative director. We have tons of great things in the works, but for now I’d like to focus on what’s happening with jQTouch:

jQTouch will remain under an MIT open source license We are starting a new foundation at Sencha called Sencha Labs — a home for all of our open source initiatives including jQTouch and also Raphaël, a fantastic SVG library from my new coworker Dmitry Baranovskiy. Sencha’s core products, Ext JS and Ext GWT, will remain dual licensed, commercial and open source GPL.

jQTouch will remain jQTouch The jQTouch library will not be ported into Ext JS, nor will it start to use Ext as a base. It will still be based on jQuery and offer a super easy way to get an iPhone interface using just HTML and CSS.

Jonathan Stark will become the primary maintainer I regretfully admit I have been remiss in keeping up with jQTouch patches and updates. I’ve simply been overwhelmed with work. For those who don’t know, Jonathan Stark has been helping with jQTouch since the beginning — he is a good friend, a talented mobile developer/consultant, and a published author. Hiring Jonathan to spend a dedicated amount of time on jQTouch spells great things for the library, first and foremost looking at better Android support. I’ll refrain from going too deeply into detail, but rest assured, we have great plans for the library.

Lastly, I just want to mention that I will also not be abandoning jQTouch. It’s my baby, and Jonathan and I both look forward to planning its future, making it more powerful, and keeping in touch with you, the community.

I hope that helps keep everyone informed and please, if you have any other questions, just ask. Thanks!

Here are the slides from my recent presentation at the 2010 Bay...

9-bits — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:30:00 -0700

Here are the slides from my recent presentation at the 2010 Bay Area jQuery conference. It was a blast to present there, I hope I can see a lot of the same people at TXJS. If you were at the presentation and enjoyed it, please throw me a review on SpeakerRate.

Edit: Also, here’s the Vimeo link (for iPhone/iPad) and the presentation on SlideShare.

jQuery Conference 2010

9-bits — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:19:14 -0700

jQuery Conference 2010:

Just a quick note to let everyone know I’ll be speaking on jQTouch at the upcoming jQuery Conference in San Francisco Bay area. The talk will be on jQTouch, hopefully showing off some new goodies, and is going down day two, April 25, at 10:00 am. Tickets are available here.

jQTouch iCal

9-bits — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:28:41 -0700

jQTouch iCal:

jQTouch iCal is an open source project which recreates iPhone’s iCal with jQTouch.

Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

9-bits — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:41:42 -0700

Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript:

This has been out for some time, but I just realized I failed to properly pimp this book here. Jon is a fantastic mobile developer and designer, and this is a great overview for anyone looking to make iPhone apps with web technologies. It also just so happens to have a portion of the book dedicated to jQTouch development.