What Is jQuery Mobile?
According to an official note at http://www.jquerymobile.com:
jQuery Mobile is a unified user interface system across all popular mobile device platforms, built on the rock-solid jQuery and jQuery UI foundation. Its lightweight code is built with progressive enhancement, and has a flexible, easily themeable design.
What jQuery Mobile Is Not
To understand jQuery Mobile, it is very important to know what it is not.
- jQuery Mobile is not a jQuery alternative for mobile browsers.
To use jQuery Mobile, you need to include the typical jQuery framework. It is not a replacement; it is a UI layer on top of jQuery.
- jQuery Mobile is not a webapp SDK.
You can create the whole mobile experience with jQuery Mobile but you will need some additional work to compile it as native apps. We will see how, why, and when to do this in the next chapters.
- jQuery Mobile is not a framework for JavaScript lovers.
Except in the case of certain advanced topics, you won’t need any JavaScript code for jQuery Mobile to work. That is great if you are a web designer who hates all of those braces and semicolons.
- jQuery Mobile is not the solution for all mobile applications, websites, or games.
However, it covers solutions for most of them. For the others, well…I have to convince you to read my other book somehow.
The Framework
If you don’t know what jQuery is, you may be a time traveler from 10 years in the past. If you are Marty McFly, point your browser to http://jquery.com and read about this incredibly ...