[Spyro7]

And this is why more web developers need to be aware of and use things like jQuery Mobile:

http://jquerymobile.com/

If you look at the platforms list on that page, you will see that you can actually use this framework to build a mobile site that looks and works decently on an extremely wide variety of devices.

One of the best things about jQuery Mobile is that it is extensively documented. Just go to the docs and demos and view the source for any page that impresses you. You will instantly be able to see the markup that you need to duplicate that pages functionality.

(Tip: Before viewing the source, make sure that you remove everything to the left of the # in the url, including the # itself. Just check out the docs, you'll know what I am referring to.)

Using a good mobile framework, it is trivial to provide a mobile version of sites that already exist on the Internet, so why not do it and gain access to a an additional audience?

[blub]

When mobile web developers see what's possible with native apps and how successful they are, what do they do? They try to clone them in typical "webapp-uber-alles" fashion, instead of building quality mobile websites. And that's why I have to look at dumbed down iOS-clone UIs while trying to browse a website from my phone.

By the way, I have just looked at jquerymobile.com from an iPhone 4 and the UX is unresponsive, showing the checkerboard pattern, flickering and so on. Not something that I'd want more web developers to be aware of. I would want more developers to be aware of web standards and good design, not JavaScript hacks.

[Spyro7]

The techniques in mobile web development are still young. A general knowledge of how to build a site for mobile interfaces has not come around yet.

For now, it is understandable that you will see some imitation of successful "app" design patterns, but things can change quite easily. If it turns out that the iOS look is not good for the mobile web experience then things will change.

"By the way, I have just looked at jquerymobile.com from an iPhone 4 and the UX is unresponsive, showing the checkerboard pattern, flickering and so on."

The project is still in beta, and there are still some rough edges. It's an open source project, so the developers and users would greatly appreciate it if you could file a bug report about this issue:

https://github.com/jquery/jquery-mobile/issues

I did a quick check and I didn't see that your issue has already been reported, so your contribution would be doubly helpful.

"I would want more developers to be aware of web standards and good design, not JavaScript hacks."

I understand your perspective (all developers should definitely know web standards and good design), but, surely, you would agree that there is value in trying to do something a little different? Today's javascript hack may well turn out to be tomorrow's revolution.

[JoelSutherland]

I've spent some time with jQuery mobile and the performance is just too poor for it to be usable. What's crazy is that regular jquerymobile.com is more responsive than the 'Docs and Demos' section that is built using jQuery mobile on my phone (Nexus S).

I've seen the same sluggishness in jQuery Mobile apps I've tried building on the iPhone4, Palm Pre and a couple of Android devices. It's too bad really.

[josteink]

In it's current state of affairs jQuery mobile is too slow to be a universal solution for mobile.

That and it makes everything look like an iPhone app and there are enough people out there who dislikes that particular sense of aesthetics.

I honestly don't see jQuery mobile having the same "thing" as plain jQuery had which made it successfull: It stayed out of your way and just worked, without making any assumptions about what you liked and what you wanted beyond that.

Any word on how well knockoutjs or other options is working on mobile?

[true_religion]

> I honestly don't see jQuery mobile having the same "thing" as plain jQuery had which made it successfull: It stayed out of your way and just worked, without making any assumptions about what you liked and what you wanted beyond that.

Jquery mobile is following the groundwork laid by Jquery-UI, not Jquery-Plain.

[luke_s]

I have just completed an R&D project for my company on using JQuery Mobile, with knockout.js, so perhaps I am qualified to answer this.

As another commenter pointed out JQuery Mobile (JQM) is following on from JQuery UI, not from straight JQuery. Knockout.js is a databinding and templating system. As such JQM and knockout.js are complementary instead of competing. Our system used knockout for databinding into the JQM UI.

My recommendation coming out of the R&D project was to use knockout for production apps and to continue to watch JQM, but not use it for production just yet. JQM is still evolving rapidly - there were a number of major changes made during our R&D project. We also ran across a number of issues making JQM work with knockout. For example JQM didn't like knockout changing some of the HTML dynamically, after JQM had been initialised. The JQM team are aware of the problems dealing with changing HTML via javascript and we saw a number of fixes committed during the course of our R&D project. One day soon JQM will be very good, but its not quite there yet.

Furthermore not every mobile application will benefit from JQM. Unless you are building an essentially forms and data driven application, it may not be very useful. Depending on your needs you will be able to get very far by using knockout to produce clean semantic markup, then just applying CSS over the top.