QBurst - Blog » iPhone

jQuery Mobile – The Upcoming Mobile Framework!

Vivek V — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:55:39 +0000

The era of Smartphones began when Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPhone to the world. Google followed next by introducing Android phones which gave a boost to the mobile application development. Architectural changes in mobile platforms such as iOS, Android, Symbian, etc. have brought out the need to develop multiple versions of the same application.

Today, there are many scripting packages available to develop mobile browser compatible pages, such as DynamicX, Sencha, jQTouch, Wink ToolKit, iWebkit etc. Most of these target only Webkit-based browsers/mobile phones, and are not presented as framework. However, there is now a new player in the market called jQuery Mobile, built on the rock-solid jQuery foundation.

jQuery Mobile is presented as a mobile framework rather than a plugin by the jQuery development team. jQuery Mobile framework is built on top of jQuery framework. According to the jQuery Mobile website it 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”

Instead of writing unique apps for each mobile device or OS, the jQuery Mobile framework allows you to design a single highly branded and customized web application that will work on all popular smartphones and tablet platforms. The first alpha version was released on October 26, 2010. jQuery mobile developers are very fast in releasing new versions of their mobile framework and have released 8 versions so far. People began to create websites using jQuery Mobile framework extensively since the start of 2011. The first beta version of jQuery Mobile that was released in July 2011, was a big hit because it introduced a number of new functions. The first Release Candidate(RC) was released just two weeks ago and they are planning to come up with the stable version, by the end of next month.

What Makes JQuery Mobile Easy and Useful

jQuery Mobile is the preferred framework for web developers who develop websites for mobile devices. There are plenty of reasons for jQuery Mobile being their favorite.

Not a New Language: jQuery Mobile is not a new language. It is based on jQuery, so anyone who knows jQuery can easily write scripts in jQuery Mobile.

Wide array of supporting devices: It supports a vast range of mobile devices, such as iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, etc.

HTML5 & CSS3 Support: It is built completely on HTML5 and uses CSS3. The jQuery Mobile behaviour is controlled by the “data-” attribute in HTML5.
Effects: jQuery Mobile can show many types of transition effects that enhance application visibility.

Native functions: It is rich with native mobile functions such as ‘longtap’ or ‘taphold’, ‘tap,’ etc. which are easy to implement.

Example :

$('div').live('tap',function(event) { alert(“You just touched”); })

Less Complexity: Due to its simple nature, it is very easy to study and deploy jQuery Mobile on various applications.

PhoneGap Compatible: jQuery Mobile works fine with PhoneGap framework, giving the application a native look and feel.

Everything is Ajax: jQuery Mobile uses AJAX for loading pages. All the pages are loaded with AJAX to the DOM. After it loads the page, it can do any fancy transition that we have come to associate with native mobile applications.

Easy Themes: jQuery Mobile comes with 5 pre-designed themes – ‘a, b, c, d,& e’. However, the developer can extend these themes and even create his own style sheets. Besides these inbuilt themes, jQuery Mobile supports 26 themes. Since it is built on jQuery UI foundation, themes are highly customizable.

Native Look: The jQuery Mobile team worked hard in the theme section to create native looks. The framework enhances the display of normal HTML tags with its own style sheets to do so.

Large Community Support: Since jQuery Mobile is based on jQuery itself, a large number of jQuery developers are moving into jQuery Mobile web development. The jQuery team also maintains a community forum where one can post questions and get answers.

jQuery Mobile is still in active development and the first stable version is expected to be released the next month. Their plan is to release additional RCs at a quick pace as they close critical bugs and move towards the release of version 1.

QBurst always take an extra step to study and explore latest trends and our developers are eagerly waiting for the release of jQuery Mobile 1 stable. QBurst Technologies is a global software services organization with a strong focus on new generation technology platforms and has a track record of developing more than 250 mobile applications for customers across the globe. For inquiries, contact us today!

Kindle App for BlackBerry from Amazon

Rasmy Kiran — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:48:48 +0000

There is good news for e-book lovers from Amazon.

Amazon’s kindle, a wireless electronic portable reader which facilitates e-book reading has now become more capsuled, making it more convenient for people on the go. BlackBerry users no longer need to carry a separate kindle to read their favorite e-books. Amazon, has now launched a Kindle app for BlackBerry, enabling the readers to purchase and read e-books. The iPhone/iTouch users already having Amazon’s kindle app, can sync the BlackBerry app with it. The readers can thus maintain their book marks consistently across devices. Users can download the kindle app free of cost. Just like subscribing for magazines, books and news papers using the Amazon kindle, readers need to pay only for the content they wish to download and read.

BlackBerry models, Curve 8520 & 8900, Tour 9630, Bold 9000 & 9700, Storm 9500, 9530, & 9550, supports this kindle app.

However, the user experience through a BlackBerry screen needs to be judged when compared to a Kindle device that provides a crisp black-and-white screen with regular paper readability.

Amazon is further in the process of developing similar kindle app versions for Mac and iPad.

Click here to read more.

Locate Your Favorite iPod/ iPhone/ Apps Without iTunes

Rasmy Kiran — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:46:19 +0000

QBurst introduces “theapps.mobi” which gives you instant access to your favorite iPod/iPhone apps without installing itunes. theapps.mobi brings you a faster and easier to use platform with different categories of iPhone and iPod touch apps, ranging from Education, Business and Entertainment to Travel, Weather, Lifestyle and Games.

The website showcases the latest products to stuff your iPhone and iPod touch and that too with regular updates. This site enables users to post comments, reviews and rate the available apps. This in turn helps to easily locate the desired category and effectively sort the applications based on rating and price preferences.

iPhone To Be The Next Generation Credit Card Reader

Rasmy Kiran — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:59:45 +0000

Make your smartphone work even smarter!

Mophie, the powerhouse of iPhone and iPod gadgets and batteries is unveiling the hottest iPhone-centric Credit Card Reader at the 2010 International CES proposed to be held at Las Vegas from 7th to 10th Jan this year. To gear up for an even smarter shopping experience you just need to swipe your credit card into the Mophies iphone compatible credit card reader. The transaction will be processed with the help of a third party application.
The Credit Card Reader can be slipped into your iPhone just like the Mophie Juice Pack Air, the external rechargeable battery introduced in the mid 2009. The detailed information including its functioning and pricing is yet to be unveiled at the CES 2010.

What iDont, DROID does?

Mahadevan Sreenivasan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:41:39 +0000

Over the years since Apple released its iPhone, many other manufacturers have come up with handsets that were supposed to become ‘iPhone Killers’. None has succeeded so far to say the least. From what we have seen so far, the Motorola DROID can be a serious contender to the crown of the iPhone 3GS. Both phones are available from their respective carriers at $199 with contracts. So the battle will be fought not in terms of price, but in terms of specs and overall usability of the devices.

Internals

The DROID runs on Arm Cortex A8 CPU 550 MHZ processor, 256MB of RAM, and 512MB of ROM. The CPU is actually 600 MHZ but it has been under-clocked at 550 MHZ. Reason for this could be battery life and over heating. There are system level applications available to clock it out at 800 MHZ but it will compromise the battery life heavily. From the initial responses it seems the Android 2.0 OS will help DROID utilize the full potential of this processor. One of the features of the DROID being hyped by Verizon is in fact its ability to switch between multiple applications at run-time – true multitasking. With this processor, there are reports that the DROID will be the fastest Android device on the market.

One important difference between the iPhone and DROID is that the iPhone comes with internal memory of 8GB, 16GB and 32GB variants with no provision of adding a SD card. The DROID has a standard internal memory but supports SD cards up to 32GB. One drawback compared to iPhone is that DROID provides only a meager 256 MB for application storage. Google does not support directly installing apps into the SD card, which largely limits the developers while deploying their products. This is a problem when it comes to graphics / game development which typically takes up a lot of space. It is also like a paradox because Google has introduced APIs for 3-D graphics and OpenGL libraries with the release of Android 2.0. Developers can however store app resources in the SD card similar to Windows Mobile development.

Touch and Feel

The screen on the DROID is a 3.7-inch capacitive touch screen (unlike the resistive iPhone / Blackberry screens) that showcases a full glass display with WVGA resolution at a handsome 480 x 854 pixels. The responsiveness on the DROID due to the capacitive touch is better than most of the other smart phone counterparts. For example gestures and flicks are registered with little to no lag. Whether that can be attributed to Moto’s screen technology, Android 2.0 improvements, or just the speedy CPU inside the DROID is anyone’s guess, but that certainly won’t let the phone down. Another advantage to having that big screen is seeing webpages how they’re meant to be viewed, and browsing on the DROID is certainly a solid experience.

The phone comes with a huge touchscreen with multi-touch but still has space for an actual hardware keyboard. It is just slightly thicker than the iPhone at 0.5 inches but manages to pack a full QWERTY keyboard, which makes it the thinnest QWERTY keyboard mobile available in the market. The only comparison that can come in its way is the Nokia N97 but it too can’t match up with its huge screen and its interface offered by Motorola and Google.

Camera

Google has made some pretty major improvements to the camera application in Android 2.0. This includes more control over white balance, focal length, flash settings, and effects. To complement this Motorola has smartly outfitted the DROID with a 5 megapixel camera coupled with an LED flash. However many initial users claim that the camera is painfully slow to focus and take a snap.

Video

The performance of video capture and playback, on the other hand, is astounding. The DROID is capable of shooting at a 720 x 480 resolution, producing viewable if not totally shake-free video. The phone definitely proves to be better in this department than with stills. The phone also comes with a HDMI port for High Definition Video. However with a resolution of 720 x 480 pixels, the full exploitation of the HDMI support is worth questionable.

Software

Android 2.0 addresses some important changes to the smart phone scene including Google Navigator, voice improvements and more. Google is in fact taking a pro-active approach at improving the platform, along with the opportunity to sync multiple Exchange and/or Google Accounts. The DROID is the first phone to come with Google Maps Navigation, which provides free, turn-by-turn, spoken driving directions.Verizon will sell a car mount for the DROID, as well completely eliminating the need of third party navigation devices like Garmin. The combination may make the DROID the best GPS phone on the market. But what really makes the software a complete win is something completely invisible – APIs. Google has added account/contact/sync APIs that will greatly improve the platform, and inherently the phone’s capabilities over time.

Browser

Mobile internet browsing is another interesting feature of this handset. The browser is of top quality supporting Flash and HTML 5. Google has promised to support Flash 10 from 2010.

Connectivity

DROID comes with a EVDO rev A on-board card for super fast 3G connectivity on Verizon Wireless. There is support for GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and a USB 2.0 port. The speed of connectivity is observed to be a notch higher than the iPhone 3GS.

Battery

The system comes with a 1400 mAh removable battery which is not bad at all but we expect that it won’t deliver the rated 270 hours standby time or 6 hrs 25 min talktime, especially comparing it to the previous CLIQ. However Motorola has managed to provide a decent talktime of around 5 hrs 30 min, thanks to the somewhat ironic under-clocked CPU!

Final Word

Overall, the DROID is a nice phone and joins the ranks of one of the best smartphones that are available in the market today. However, it’s a mixed bag on whether this handset could really usurp the iPhone as the best performing smartphone on the market. Nonetheless, DROID is a formidable competitor of the current top performing smartphones on the market, and there is a serious competition just getting under way between the different supported mobile OS’s.