[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.

[paulirish]

How is focusing on the future doing a disservice to anyone?

Well, you're clearly not serving the present.

[_neil]

Competition is a good thing. Choice is cool.

[raganwald]

Well it's your call to make and I'm not going to second-guess you on it. Good luck with the project, as you probably know I'm a jQuery fan and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Naturally, I expect to see into, tap, ergo and when in the jQuery core as well...

http://github.com/raganwald/jQuery-Combinators

;-)

[armandososa]

With all due respecy John, I think we all should focus only on the latest-and-greatest WebKit platforms or on platforms that are comparably good. Mobile development is exciting precisely because it's a road to the future.

Look at the place we are in desktop web development because we have to support old browser. We are stuck 7+ years in the past.

I understand the intellectual allure of writing a framework that supports a gazillion different devices and I appreciate what you've done with jQuery for web development but frankly, I don't care about jQueryMobile.

Except that it scares the hell out of me the day some client starts asking me to support 5 year old Nokias.

[mixmax]

Jquery mobile is great because they will try to support as many platforms as possible. If you run a real mobile site with a lot of users you have to take small platforms into consideration, just like your website needs to support IE 6 if you have lots of users. It's not fun but it would be bad business not to do it.[1]

If a mobile framework can reach this goal it will make mobile development a heck of a lot easier, and I applaud that.

[1] You need some scale before development for platforms that maybe constitute 3% of your users will be a financially good option.

[patrickaljord]

Youtube and other google apps don't support IE6, not to mention many other big traffic web apps and web sites (including 37signals apps).

[mixmax]

IE6 has around 7% marketshare according to this: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Not supporting it is like telling one in fourteen of your customers you don't want their business. This seems like a bad idea, unless of course you have non-financial motives, such as wanting to kill off IE6 by not supporting it and driving it into oblivion.

[patrickaljord]

Those are general stats, you need to look at your personal stats which might be at 0.5% or 65% and decide from there, not based on these kind of sites. Making your site work on IE will require tons of hour of work and therefor money. It'll also just not work for HTML5 apps, unless you have a second version of your site coded in flash. Make sure it's worth it.

[sprout]

You can't get meaningful stats unless you start out supporting IE.