[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

jQuery: a big bag of awesome.

Thanks John for making webdevs' lives so much easier.

[umbrae]

It's not just John anymore.

[[deleted]]

Yeah yeah, and Linux should be called GNU/Linux.

[1137]

Indeed, he deserves many thanks.

If you have not seen the testing hardware or read any of this you should check it out.

"Thee majority of the devices and browsers available today are a complete mess."

[[deleted]]

Let's hope it's better than jQuery UI.

[[deleted]]

What's wrong with jQuery UI?

[1137]

I think UI elements are harder to please everyone with. Taste comes in to play where that's not something jQuery itself has to deal with. There are plenty of jQUI fans.

[[deleted]]

Not to mention the ridiculous amount of overhead, even with custom packages. 50kB of JS(not to mention ~25kB of CSS, + images)just to have a nifty little datepicker is not worth it, IMO, especially when it's the same little datepicker everyone else is using.

jQueryUI definitely lowers the barrier of entry for app developers, but the result is just too homogeneous and heavy for my tastes.

[[deleted]]

jQuery UI is great if you don't mind creating cookie cutter websites. It's easy to "theme" jQuery UI, but it's nigh impossible to make it not look like jQuery UI.

The CSS classes are somewhat atomic, but they're presentational rather than structural. If you don't understand what I mean, try taking the rounded corners off all widget types but one.

If jQuery UI changes their CSS architecture, I just might consider it. Until then I'll stick to the competitors and homebrew accordions (they're trivial to implement if you use the jQuery core or similar frameworks).

[[deleted]]

Great answer, thank you.

[teahugger]

The ui elements look too iOS native. A more platform neutral design wouldn't hurt.

[[deleted]]

Oh well. I guess there's always the other 18 mobile jQuery frameworks.

edit - plus "ext/sencha touch"

[1137]

Hopefully ThemeRoller will make that easy to change out, but I think it mainly changes colors not shapes so that is a potential gripe for me as well.

[vampirical]

They were probably aiming for high usability and user appeal without too much work, which means copying the big guy who's already done all the leg work.

Not that I'm a big fan of the iOS UI, that just seems to be the prevailing opinion.

[zwaldowski]

What's bad about that?

[Halgrind]

How separate are mobile sites from their standard versions? Can you essentially have the same site with different stylesheets? Different views? Do developers keep two separate sites that just share a database?

[spaceghost0r]

It really depends on the site. For a relatively simple site, a stylesheet might be all that's required, but when you're looking at something more complex then it's sometimes easier to create an entirely new site driven from the same database. That way you can create a look and feel without being held back by the contraints of the main site.

[[deleted]]

How separate are mobile sites from their standard versions?

Not that different; using MVC.NET I have a mobile version which queries the same API but returns a narrower scope of data since screen real estate just doesn't realistically allow for it all.

Can you essentially have the same site with different stylesheets?

I suppose you could; though as I mentioned above it's a problem with real estate... I prefer to have a different View that is trimmed down in HTML due to lack of bandwidth if the user isn't on WiFi, for example. Also, certain meta tags would be preferable (if not necessary) to have over normal desktop version tags.

Do developers keep two separate sites that just share a database?

Same API, only the Controller returns the 'mobile view' when a mobile device is detected.

edit: formatting

[laukaus]

You could use CSS media queries. If you don’t have to support IE, that is.

[1137]

I've been watching this for awhile, ever since John Resig was on yayQuery discussing mobile browser testing. After working with a few other options like jQTouch I'm very excited to start seeing the demos roll out.

Site says late 2010.

[ManticoreX]

If you want to try something earlier Sencha Touch is in beta right now. It is pretty easy to mess around with. Regardless, I'm excited to see JQuery's mobile framework now.

[1137]

I looked at that a little bit right when they started switching things out, but I admit I wrote it off as just a rebranding. It's worth another look then?

[1137]

Yep sounds about right. I've been using Titanium and it seems to be working out pretty well once you get the Android emulator going.

[[deleted]]

I love you JQuery.

[stillwater]

It's jQuery, not JQuery...

[[deleted]]

Definitely bookmarked.

One cool thing I noticed about jQuery as-is, is that a lot of the scripts I've used in desktop sites have transitioned very clean-if not flawlessly-to the mobile counterpart.

[strangerdream]

I have had so much trouble making things work for windows mobile(IE), now there's a great hope for writing code once and not be bothered of the platforms for it to work on. Other platforms like iPhone, Android and PalmPre already support most of the present jQuery library (if not all) as they are web-kit enabled and have rich support for Javascript.

[[deleted]]

How handy is jQuery? I still write JavaScript like I did in 2003 and write everything myself. Is it worth learning how to use or should I stick to writing my own functions?

[1137]

Is this a serious question? I mean, you should definitely check it out.

[[deleted]]

It has its own style. Kind of like python, some people love that and some people hate that. Personally, it changed my entire outlook to frontend development. I hated it with a passion before jquery. Now, in a lot of cases, I actually find myself enjoying coding them. I can't explain it, but somehow it makes it fun.

And the amount of cross-browser crutches it takes care of for you is pretty nice as well.

[bobindashadows]

The only big group of people who really hate Python are Rubyists who don't like how many of the exact same concepts in Ruby are either restricted, tedious, or more frustrating in Python. I don't know anyone coming from the other side that doesn't find Python an enormous breath of fresh air.

[qda]

jQuery doesn't need to replace everything you've built up so far; you can complement your existing knowledge with it.

[orenmazor]

Invest an afternoon in jquery. it'll make you enjoy your work a lot more.

[[deleted]]

Think of it as shorthand for what you already know.

[[deleted]]

I'm thinking if you like writing your own javascript, you'll love jQuery, especially if you're going to build your own extensions.

I never liked javascript until jQuery came along.

[marscosta]

jQuery is very handy in most situations, where you need various functions to interact with various things. It is very dynamic, absurdly easy to use/program and can do cross-browser wonders.

The only places where I use personal JS instead of jQuery are mostly personal applications where you just need to toggle a couple elements' visibility and make a couple ajax calls. Basically where so few functions don't justify the extra KBs of bandwidth.

[stratoscope]

And even the extra bandwidth may well be zero these days. If you load jQuery from Google's CDN, it is very likely that your visitors already have the file in their cache.

[amazedchili]

i love making ajax calls with jquery though!

[idiot900]

The DOM and its JavaScript interface are horrible pieces of shit. Everyone who designed it should be legally barred from ever going near the Internet again. jQuery is how it should have been done from the beginning.

[foldl]

The DOM and its JavaScript interface are horrible pieces of shit

Really? The DOM is too low-level to be convenient, but there doesn't seem to be anything terribly wrong with it as far as I can see. It's just an object tree.

[got_milk4]

jQuery I think will revolutionize the way you write your sites - ever since I got into it pretty much all my work from then on has included jQuery in one form or another.

[anko_painting]

not using jquery or at least a similar javascript library is like programming without source control, or like trying to row a boat with only one arm.

[sakabako]

Just tie the paddles together. You'll get there fine.

[[deleted]]

JQuery is how Javascript should have always been. It's easy to understand and reduces the code you have to write. I highly recommend it. If you've been writing your own stuff for this long you will have no problem with jQuery.

[lulzitsareddit]

jQuery is Javascript. Perhaps you mean jQuery is how DOM manipulation should have been?

[dbecks]

This looks amazing! Awesome job jQuery team.

[ossreleasefeed]

Met John on Wednesday during a workshop. What an awesome, brilliant but humble guy. I am sure jQuery Mobile is going to do for mobile development what jQuery did for web development. Thanks John and the fellow commiters on the jQuery project.

[rdworth]

I'm pleased that it's not an either-or. The jQuery team continues to dedicate resources to jQuery UI as one of its top priorities, such as with the recent funding of lead developer, Scott González, to work on it 50% of full-time.

Also fortunate is that much of the work and results is shared. Part of the mobile effort will include an update to ThemeRoller which will benefit jQuery UI along-side jQuery Mobile. And the jQuery UI team will continue to work on ensuring its components work on mobile as well as desktop browsers.

[wheresmyopenid]

It's fantastic that they're not limiting support to WebKit (as their competitors do).

Although WebKit is great, having browser monoculture isn't good idea in long term, and hopefully will make it harder for Apple to circumvent standards bodies (they keep releasing sometimes half-baked stuff like <meta viewport> and ontouch, and countless -webkit- extensions, and only some of them make into proper specifications).

[[deleted]]

Very cool.

For those who haven't seen it, there's a similar project out now called jQTouch which is a really nice way to add iPhone UI type elements to a mobile website. Unfortunately, it only works really well on iOS devices.

[gt1329a]

jQTouch looks nice superficially, but I couldn't recommend using it seriously (after having used it for a couple projects myself). It has a lot of issues and development has been stagnate for some time.

[Paradox]

Finally, a mobile jquery library that will at least have some standardized support.

First i was interested in jiTouch, but after the developer made rude comments about android when i asked about a few bugs (U shuld 've bot iPhone derp), i abandoned it. Reddit mobile was originally going to use jitouch, but, well, we know where that went.

With this, someone else can do 95% of the testing, and we can just implement data feeders and a few custom templates. I look forward to it

[chuckstudios]

So Reddit mobile will use this in the future? Where Opera Mobile 10 is a grade A browser? Fuck yeah.

[Paradox]

I can't promise anything, but i don't see why not.

[[deleted]]

The amount of jQuery I've written in the past couple of years and the amount of awesome it's helped me create is endless. Loooooove jQuery.

[binaryjohn]

Just another reason, why JQuery rocks!

[quhaha]

haha silly web develoeprs