jQuery has long been a popular JavaScript library for creating rich interactive websites and web apps. However, since it was designed primarily for desktop browsers, it doesn’t have many features specifically designed for building mobile web apps.
jQuery Mobile is a new project that addresses this shortfall. It’s a framework built on top of jQuery that provides a range of user interface elements and features for you to use in your mobile apps.
The framework is pretty cutting-edge at the time of writing — in fact, the first alpha version was only released last month — but it’s already possible to do some great things with it.
In this article I’ll look at some of the key features and benefits of jQuery Mobile, and show some examples of how this new framework can help you build top-quality mobile apps in next to no time.
For best results, you’ll probably want to view the examples in this article with a mobile device such as iPhone or Android. Alternatively, Safari on the desktop (with a narrow window width) makes a good substitute.
Let’s go!