mobile web ui with node

[john.tiger]

we've tried using JQuery Mobile but it's way too buggy (and note all the
unanswered posts on the forum which is not a good sign)

Sencha Touch seems popular but looks complex to use with a node
framework so looking at JQTouch (I guess it's some sort of off-shoot
from Sencha). We want to keep things as simple as possible.

any experiences / suggestions ?

[Matthew Hazlett]

Jo
http://joapp.com/

DHTMLX Touch
http://dhtmlx.com/touch/?mn

Haven't used these for a project, your mileage may vary

[Ben Combee]

I'll suggest Enyo 2.0 + Onyx UI, the framework I work on for HP. It's
at http://enyojs.com and it originated in HP webOS where it was used
on phones and tablets running node.js-based services, but it now
supports iOS, Android, and desktop browsers.

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[David Whitten]

I understand that Rob Tweed has a system for making Sencha Touch much easier to use.
http://www.mgateway.com/ for more details.

Dave

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[Tim Caswell]

Also some popular frameworks are backbone.js and ember.js (aka sproutcore 2.0).  Backbone has no ui widgets, and I ember doesn't have much.

There are *many* mobile frameworks these days.

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[JohnLeo Zimmer]

I would suggest working through Rob's two part EWD Tutorial to see
whether it is a good fit:
http://gradvs1.mgateway.com/download/EWD_Mobile_Tutorial_Part1_857.pdf

jl.z

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:46 AM, David Whitten <whi...@worldvista.org> wrote:

> I understand that Rob Tweed has a system for making Sencha Touch much easier
> to use.
> http://www.mgateway.com/ for more details.
>
> Dave
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:28 AM, john.tiger <john.tig...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> we've tried using JQuery Mobile but it's way too buggy (and note all the
>> unanswered posts on the forum which is not a good sign)
>>
>> Sencha Touch seems popular but looks complex to use with a node framework
>> so looking at JQTouch (I guess it's some sort of off-shoot from Sencha).  We
>> want to keep things as simple as possible.
>>
>> any experiences / suggestions ?
>>
>> --
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>
>

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[Paul]

I've used Sencha's ExtJS with node on a couple of PoC's and the
integration was pretty straightforward (either simply via express/REST
or using nowjs/websockets to push updates to the ExtJS data classes).
A quick glance at the Sencha Touch 2 API's shows a similar set of
classes to ExtJS in this regard. The framework itself has a bit of a
learning curve, but the integration shouldn't be too bad.

- Paul

[john.tiger]

On 04/16/2012 09:01 AM, Tim Caswell wrote:

Also some popular frameworks are backbone.js and ember.js (aka sproutcore 2.0).  Backbone has no ui widgets, and I ember doesn't have much.

There are *many* mobile frameworks these days.

yes indeed - actually we are more interested in the CSS display side and js actions (ie fixed position nav bar - in the future a client side framework will likely be used but for now sticking with our server side node framework

I'll explore some of the sencha touch suggestions made above - still kind of curious the difference between touch 2 vs JQTouch  and which would be easier to use with our server side node. 

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:46 AM, David Whitten <whi...@worldvista.org> wrote:

I understand that Rob Tweed has a system for making Sencha Touch much easier to use.
http://www.mgateway.com/ for more details.

Dave

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:28 AM, john.tiger <john.tig...@gmail.com> wrote:

we've tried using JQuery Mobile but it's way too buggy (and note all the unanswered posts on the forum which is not a good sign)

Sencha Touch seems popular but looks complex to use with a node framework so looking at JQTouch (I guess it's some sort of off-shoot from Sencha).  We want to keep things as simple as possible.

any experiences / suggestions ?

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[Stephan Bardubitzki]

If you want to support a broad range of devices jQM is the way to go and the new v1.1.0 final release has a lot of bug fixes and improvements. I'm using jQM with backbone.js, and require.js on node, but would advice to use azicchetti's router https://github.com/azicchetti/jquerymobile-router  instead of the backbone router.

[robot1125]

Please make sure you check out Sencha's license agreement... it's been a showstopper for some folks in the past.  If I understand correctly, it's a revocable license, so you need to decide if that's too much risk for you.

[john.tiger]

On 04/16/2012 02:21 PM, Stephan Bardubitzki wrote:

If you want to support a broad range of devices jQM is the way to go and the new v1.1.0 final release has a lot of bug fixes and improvements. I'm using jQM with backbone.js, and require.js on node, but would advice to use azicchetti's router https://github.com/azicchetti/jquerymobile-router  instead of the backbone router.

I wish we could stay with jQM but honestly, even 1.1.0 is still just too buggy - things like buttons overflowing the grid blocks, images not sizing correctly, etc - the lack of "fit and finish" just destroys the user experience - it would be nice if we had the time and resources to correct and submit fixes but looks like a big learning curve and undertaking and frankly can't even register on the forum (and noticing most posts arent' getting answered.  we are routing on the server (yeah not quite as fast as on client and much of it is data transfer but we'll work on that later). 

I'll look at jQTouch tonight and evaluate -

[Stephan Bardubitzki]

 images not sizing correctly

What do you mean by that? jQM doesn't has API for sizing images, it's done by the browser and works quite well by applying some CSS. 

[P. Douglas Reeder]

Enyo has an good message-passing system and is great for throwing
something together, then refining it to be what you really want.
There's less boilerplate than other frameworks I'm familiar with, so
it's easier to read.

Unfortunately, the widget set is not yet complete.

You'll want to give it a try when Ares 2 is released this month.


Mojito is intriguing and the learning curve should be easier since you
already know Node, but I haven't actually tried it.

[rtweed]

Mobile web frameworks are something I've spent a lot of time working
with and researching for several years, pretty much from their
earliest days, so perhaps I can provide a bit of insight that may be
helpful. Just to be clear, I am independent of all the key framework
development companies and what follows are my own opinions based on my
own R&D and experience.

I would class Sencha Touch (particularly the latest v2) as the current
"Rolls Royce" of mobile web frameworks. Actually Sencha Touch was an
offshoot of jQTouch - the original core developer of JQTouch was hired
by Sencha and the ExtJS framework architecture was adapted to create
Sencha Touch.

I've not really been impressed by jQuery Mobile, but then I'm
personally not a big fan of jQuery generally. The general view is
that jQuery Mobile is focussed more on mobile web *sites*, while
frameworks like Sencha Touch are all about emulating the Native App
experience (both iOS and Android) via the capabilities of WebKit
mobile browsers, HTML5 & CSS3.

As other posters have noted, a lot of people feel uncomfortable with
the Sencha licensing policy, though, unlike ExtJS, Sencha Touch has a
free license even for commercial use (interestingly Sencha changed
licensing of Sencha Touch to a free license when they announced v1.0
and at that time jQuery Mobile was beginning to make a buzz - most saw
this as a defensive move by Sencha to stop people defecting)

JQTouch is somewhat more rudimentary compared with Sencha Touch and is
a bit of a back-water these days. It's much more CSS3 and tag
orientated compared with Sencha Touch's pure Javascript approach.
That makes it simpler to learn and use but it does tend to have
limitations compared with Sencha Touch. Whilst Sencha Touch attempts
(pretty impressively) to work across both iOS and Android platforms,
JQTouch (certainly in the past) tended to focus on iOS Native App look
and feel.

n my opinion, the one to watch is Dojo Mobile which, whilst still in
its relatively early days, seems to be doing a lot of good stuff in a
very nice way. There are, of course, a growing number of other
frameworks appearing, but I personally would stick with the big guys
who have been in this sector for many more years and who understand
the many nasty devils that lurk in the detail. As with all software,
anyone can create 80% of what's needed in pretty quick time. It's
that remaining 20% that kills them and frustrates the hell out of
potential users.

In summary, for now, my view is that Sencha Touch is the leader by a
long way. Yes it has a steep learning curve. Their documentation is
improving these days and they have done a great job of harmonising the
ExtJS and Sencha Touch 2 API architecture, concepts and syntax.

As commented elsewhere, I've done quite a bit of work on abstracting
and automating the use of both Sencha Touch and ExtJS, but my work is
currently focused on their integration with the GT.M and Cache
databases - though I have plans to open that up in the future by
virtue of the ewdGateway Node.js module. In the meantime, if you
don't use (or want to uee) those databases, I'm afraid you'll have to
climb that steep learning curve, but the reward is a very cool set of
mobile web capabilities

Rob

[Galil]

Have you thought of YUI 3? I have limited experience with it but have
been successful so far with using the widgets in a mobile browser.
It has an npm module too.

http://yuilibrary.com/

Community modules
(ie accordion plugin, etc)
http://yuilibrary.com/gallery/

jQuery to YUI cheat sheet
http://www.jsrosettastone.com/

[john.tiger]

On 04/17/2012 01:51 AM, rtweed wrote:
> Mobile web frameworks are something I've spent a lot of time working
> with and researching for several years, pretty much from their
> earliest days, so perhaps I can provide a bit of insight that may be
> helpful.

appreciate your insights -

our initial plan is to be agile - mostly server side template rendering
(node + mongodb) which we know well and can bang out fast to pass the
"fail fast" stage - then upgrade to more client side / native stuff in
version 2

so, in this approach does it make any sense to use the lower learning
curve jQTouch to get something out there asap, and migrate to Touch v2
later if warranted ?

ps: nice auto "folding" on your web site

> Just to be clear, I am independent of all the key framework
> development companies and what follows are my own opinions based on my
> own R&D and experience.
>
> I would class Sencha Touch (particularly the latest v2) as the current
> "Rolls Royce" of mobile web frameworks. Actually Sencha Touch was an
> offshoot of jQTouch - the original core developer of JQTouch was hired
> by Sencha and the ExtJS framework architecture was adapted to create
> Sencha Touch.
>
> I've not really been impressed by jQuery Mobile, but then I'm
> personally not a big fan of jQuery generally. The general view is
> that jQuery Mobile is focussed more on mobile web *sites*, while
> frameworks like Sencha Touch are all about emulating the Native App
> experience (both iOS and Android) via the capabilities of WebKit

> mobile browsers, HTML5& CSS3.

[rtweed]

John: yes your suggested approach makes sense - the tag-orientated
frameworks are definitely much easier to learn and become productive
with. Sencha Touch takes quite a while to become familiar with - once
you "get it" it's all pretty logical, but it's not helped by
inconsistent examples that can throw you - eg unexplained differences
in examples that turn out to be just stylistic rather than for any
particular technical reason. Forum activity is always a good gauge as
to the complexity and learning curve of any framework - and the Sencha
Touch one is *very* active. The corollary is that the Sencha Touch
forum is a great place to get answers to your own "now how the hell do
I do x?" questions!

You might want to check out the Dojo Mobile demo pages and see if that
offers you any advantage over JQTouch. It's also very tag-orientated
(as you'd expect from the Dojo stable), and when I last looked it
seemed to be providing quite an impressive range of Native UI-like
features.

Unfortunately I can't suggest my EWD technology for you since I don't
have a Mongo port for it, which is a pity.

Rob

[Filipe]

Really nice answers guys, thanks for the discussion.

I quit using jQuery Mobile because I'm having to much bugs too in
elements, slides and renderings. But what I REALLY liked was the <div
data-role="page" id="page1"> and then access it easily with <a
href="#page1">


john.tiger, how are your tests with those new frameworks?

Best regards,

Filipe

[john.tiger]

first, I appreciate all the input received.

re JQM - we found most of the showstopping bugs had to do with ui-grid /
blocks - we've totally eliminated using these and are otherwise finding
JQM to be the easiest/fastest way to get something out the door. ps: we
are also not using transitions.

after yahoo locked up my system - I wrote off anything YUI (I've never
felt their tools are that friendly w/ linux - but might just be our own
experience).

played a bit with dojo - a lot there, it just didn't seem to "flow" well
to me - this might just be personal or maybe needs better docs/tutorials
- I think it is worth looking more at.

haven't proceeded with JQTouch since what I've read seems most of effort
has passed to either JQM or Touch2

Touch2 looks very good but concerned about potential for license change
and we want to stay with totally free open source - also it is a
significant learning curve over JQM -

so our plan is: stay with JQM (without ui-grid, transitions) for
initial versions - maybe then migrate to dojo or Touch2 / phonegap
after passing fail-fast phase.

>
> Best regards,
>
> Filipe
>

[Carl S. Yestrau Jr.]

I used jquery mobile on geobacon.com and it was a coleslaw wrestling match.

I'm curious of anyone has used boostrap for mobile?

[john.tiger]

On 04/25/2012 01:34 PM, Carl S. Yestrau Jr. wrote:
> I used jquery mobile on geobacon.com and it was a coleslaw wrestling match.
>
> I'm curious of anyone has used boostrap for mobile?

thks for the suggestion - had not heard of bootstrap - looks very
impressive - we had used skeleton before so the fluid layout seems
similar (nice) - now to see if it has nice android/ios mobile themes &
widgets like JQM (and less bugs).

one tutorial showed it playing well with backbone so a nice stack could be:
bootstrip - backbone - node - socket.io - mongodb