This question is probably better served on the jQuery-en list, as
Johnathan mentioned.  Having said that, I've done some testing with
interesting results.

Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) is the least functional browser (big
surprise).  It won't even begin to run the jQuery test suite
(www.jQuery.com/test).  From what I know PIE is a basic mobile browser
that has only recently added basic AJAX, DOM, and XMLDOM support.  I
haven't gotten further with testing, because I don't yet know why the
test won't load.

Opera Mobile 8.65 is a very capable browser, passing the test suite
with flying colors -- except for failing at anchor tags that reference
an anchor (<a href="#anchorlink">).  From the testing I've done, it
appears that Opera Mobile adds the base href to the anchor in all
cases (i.e. #anchorlink --> http://www.yoursite.com/index.html#anchorlink),
making it impossible to grab the plain anchor without parsing.  This
will stop the jQuery test suite, but I setup the test on my own server
and disabled that #anchor test, and it passes the rest (with a few
warnings).

Opera Mini is rendered with the same engine as Opera 9.5 (according to
Opera) making Opera Mini a supported browser by association.  Minimo
0.2 also passes the suite without trouble.  Google Android's browser
is based on WebKit.  I know jQuery functions on iPhone Safari -- it's
not perfect, but I expect good compatibility with WebKit based
browsers.

Although jQuery functions across these browsers, IRL many of the cool
effects that jQuery makes simple won't be seen on a mobile browser,
because the interface is so different.  There is (almost) no concept
of mousedown, mouseup, or hover; click and focus behave differently,
screensize is different vs effective window size, animations are slow,
etc.  The challenge in mobile browsers is mostly in the interface
design.  The main advantage IMO is AJAX-loaded content, for speed and
low data/bandwidth usage.

Also, although the test suite 'passes' in these browsers, you will
come across functions that don't work anyway.  I have had trouble
with .load() and some callback functions in Opera Mobile and I can't
pinpoint the source of the bug.  I am working through this with trial
and error but eventually would like to compile a definitive reference.

PIE looks like the big headache in all of this.  I too would like to
see jQuery on PIE because it has such a large market share as the
default WM browser.  I would recommend compiling your own test suite
and enabling tests bit by bit, as I've started to do.  If you go to
jQuery.com/test and check out the JS sources it's pretty easy to see
how things work.  I'd like to see some progress on this, so post to
jQuery-en if you get things running.  An advantage of posting on the
other list is that you'll have more beta-testers who may volunteer.

HTH

Charles
doublerebel.com

On Nov 27, 6:44 am, "Jonathan Sharp" <jdsh...@gmail.com> wrote: