When developing apps for the latest smartphones, you’re faced with several vexing questions. How many platforms do you need to accommodate? What level of support do mobile browsers provide? To help you address these and many other key issues, this guide provides a hands-on tour of the most powerful JavaScript frameworks available today.
You’ll build sample apps with jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and PhoneGap to learn the unique advantages—and disadvantages—of each framework. From there, you can determine which one is best for your project. This book is ideal for web developers familiar with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Experience the simplicity of jQuery Mobile for building cross-browser applications
Learn how Sencha Touch’s architecture, widgets, and blazing-fast rendering engine makes it a good choice for enterprise software
Use PhoneGap to package your web app into a native iOS, Android, or Windows Phone application
Discover the impact of various HTML5 features on mobile app development
Pick up JavaScript productivity tips as you delve into its object orientation, closures, and coding conventions
Test and debug your app with a collection of tips, tricks, and tools
Adrian Kosmaczewski has been working as an iOS developer since 2008. Before that, he was a web developer working with classic ASP since 1996, ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Django, and more. He runs a consulting and training business in Oron-la-Ville, Switzerland. He has a degree of Master of Science in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool.
Comments about oreilly Mobile JavaScript Application Development:
If you are a JavaScript developer and want to enhance your knowledge by learning the mobile app development, it is a fantastic book for you.
11/30/2012
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Great crash course in HTML5 mobile apps
By The R
from Los Angeles, CA
About Me Developer
Pros
Concise
Easy to understand
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Intermediate
Comments about oreilly Mobile JavaScript Application Development:
Short, but sweet. This is a great crash course in mobile app development using HTML5. It goes over all the basics in enough detail to get your bearings. After reading this, you're pointed in the right direction.
8/13/2012
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
3.0
Good for mobile web app newbies
By juristr
from Italy
About Me Architect, Developer
Pros
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Cons
Too basic
Best Uses
Novice
Comments about oreilly Mobile JavaScript Application Development:
If you are a JavaScript newbie eager to dive into creating rich mobile web applications, this book is for you. It is structured in a very clear and intuitive way, introducing the most useful HTML5 features, some JavaScript performance tips, jQuery mobile and Sencha Touch examples and illustrates even how PhoneGap works.
Personally, I expected the book to go more in detail on how to develop mobile apps with JavaScript in conjunction with some of todays popular JavaScript frameworks like Backbone. Instead, the first chapters are mostly just introductory which (if you did already extensively work with JavaScript) you can just directly skip. The core parts, the jQuery and Sencha Touch chapters then provide some quite detailled technical level.
But still, all in all, the book is something for you if you're a complete newbie in this area, otherwise you might be better served with one treating some more advanced topics.
Comments about oreilly Mobile JavaScript Application Development:
This book does an excellent job of providing an introduction to the leading HTML5 technologies - JQuery Mobile, PhoneGap and Sencha Touch.
This book is well organized and easy to follow with clear instructions for using these technologies to build basic applications. While I can enthusiastically recommend this book as an excellent starting point, further reading is necessary to build an app with high performance and seamless UI.
A more definitive guide to mobile javascript app development would need to include more information on troubleshooting the UI and performance issues associated with html5 mobile development.
7/11/2012
(2 of 3 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Good !
By Martin
from Montreal
About Me Developer
Pros
Concise
Helpful examples
Cons
Best Uses
Intermediate
Comments about oreilly Mobile JavaScript Application Development:
Excellent mobile frameworks overview.
7/10/2012
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
Mobile JavaScript Hybridization
By Piers Hollott
from Victoria, BC
About Me Developer
Pros
Easy to understand
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Intermediate
Comments about oreilly Mobile JavaScript Application Development:
I have just finished reading a review copy of Adrian Kosmaczewski's book on Mobile Development using JavaScript, and I highly recommend it, particularly if you are faced with a decision about mobile development frameworks and you have a team which is already familiar with hybridized JavaScript approaches like JQuery or GWT.
After dealing with some basic groundwork, Kosmaczewski devotes a solid chapter to each of the prevailing uses of JavaScript in the mobile arena: HTML5 with JavaScript, JQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and PhoneGap. While there are advantages to all of these approaches, the prevailing wind seems to indicate use of JQuery Mobile if you are already invested in JQuery, and Sencha Touch if you are building an enterprise-size solution.
Either of these approaches - actually, all of these approaches - will allow you to deploy to multiple platforms, which is a key component of JavaScript hybridization: ubiquity. The difficulty I have personally encountered is the flip side of the ubiquity coin, flexibility. JavaScript may be everywhere, but can also become everything, and this can lead to paralysis.
An example of this: I have recently been working on some development in with mobile SVG, which is becoming more and better supported on various mobile platforms. SVG is not hard to work with, and rolling your own application to do exciting things is enjoyable if you like that sort of thing; however... do you use HTML with embedded SVG? HTML5? Just SVG with E4X/EcmaScript (which is just JavaScript, really)? or Raphael.js, or Sencha Touch, which encapsulates it?
At some point, you just need to stick your paddle in the water and see which way the current takes you. And Kosmaczewski's book is a good starting point.
