What about jQTouch? While jQTouch is a great framework and we're proud to have it as part of the jQuery community - we really wanted a mobile framework to exist that would truly support all the mobile platforms out there. We chatted with the jQTouch team and there wasn't really any interest on their end to head in that direction. It's obviously going to be a ton of work - but that's something that the jQuery project is very interested in tackling.
Is this a response to Sencha Touch? We've actually been working on jQuery mobile for a while now - long before Sencha Touch was released/announced. We're not particularly concerned with Sencha Touch mostly for the same reason that we're building an alternative to jQTouch: We want to support more platforms and do it in a completely seamless way.
What data did you use to choose the browsers that you did? We've been talking with a number of mobile analytics firms and large corporations, gathering data, and will be releasing a bunch of the reliable numbers that we've collected on the jQuery mobile blog. Right now we're confident in the browsers and versions that we've chosen - although that'll likely change over the next couple months as the market shifts.
We intend to continue to fund jQTouch work because we want to support all those developers (thousands at least) that have chosen jQTouch (and jQuery) as their platform. We will continue to support jQTouch ports to more phones and more browsers as additional browsers and platforms emerge (like the Blackberry Torch) that can support a minimal rich application experience.
As you've noted in the past, Sencha Touch takes a different approach than what you're planning to do with jQuery Mobile. It's ok to differ, but we wouldn't characterize it as a "disservice". Our belief (right or wrong) is that few people will use applications (and I emphasize that word) unless they can produce experiences that can compete with native. We've had ten years of mobile web sites with static, unresponsive, high latency user experiences that haven't interested or excited people. We want to move on from that.
Today, iOS, Android and the Blackberry Torch can support web apps that compete with native experiences (woohoo!), but by the end of the year, we'll see phones from Nokia (and more from RIM and maybe even some from Microsoft) with good HTML5/CSS3 support and fast processors and GPU's that allow everyone to have rich app experiences regardless of their choice of carrier or their geography. With the rise of $30 HTML5 Android phones from China, we see this as inexorable.
Our two projects are making different assumptions about what will most interest (and excite) end-users. I hope we can maintain an engaged (and polite) discussion as we walk these paths. Feel free to email me, would love to chat more to provide more context around our decisions. We'll also put together a blog post soon on why we're doing what we are.
Look forward to hearing from you.
-- michael
Oh well, not saying you shouldn't have chosen this path, just pointing out the consequences...
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/
I wanted to like it but there just didn't seem to be much going on over there. Now that it's part of "Sencha Labs", it seems the focus is now over on Sencha Touch.
While, Sencha Touch is definitely interesting, they still don't appear to have announced pricing. Based on how they license and price their other products, I don't think I'm going to like it.
This announcement is awesome and makes me giddy. There really aren't any good options out there for mobile websites. You basically have to roll your own so this is great news.
jQTouch could have preempted the possibility of jQuery Mobile being viable in the first place, but it stagnated instead. The jQuery team can't be blamed for that.
I have basically had to roll out my own framework with the help of jQtouch and jQuery. It's been a struggle to say the least, especially while trying to recreate some of the UI interactions such as the elastic scroll and animated slides.
Looking forward to contributing to this project.
Nice to see that the jQuery team is taking the project on, and I'll be very excited to use it once it is released.
