Mastering jQuery Mobile

• Create spectacular mobile applications using jQuery Mobile to its fullest potential
• Build a complete and customizable professional, standard theme using advanced effects such as ChangePage, PageInit, and Swipe
• Take your web app to the next level by turning your native application with Apache Cordova

• Create a theme for your jQuery Mobile application by using the ThemeRoller tool
• Test your application on a variety of resolutions through Screenfly
• Master pages, panels, pop ups, toolbars, and navbars in jQuery Mobile
• Understand how mobile web design best practices can enhance your mobile web application
• Allow your users to navigate pages with a swipe gesture and add transition and effects to the page changes
• Discover how to create jQuery Mobile widgets that will extend the framework to suit your needs
• See how Apache Cordova can turn your web application into a native Android or iOS app
• Use jQuery Mobile with other popular JavaScript frameworks and technology such as Backbone and Node

JQuery Mobile is a touch-optimized OS framework. It is compatible with all major phone platforms and browsers and is a HTML5 UI system that allows developers to make rich mobile web applications that also behave and look good no matter what device or browser is being used. Using this framework, we can create mobile applications via web technologies such as HTML5/CSS3 and JavaScript that function and behave like native applications. JQuery enables you to perform hordes of functions in comparison to other JavaScript libraries. JQuery has a following that religiously devote their time to developing and enhancing the functionality of JQuery. Thus, there are hundreds of prewritten plugins available for download to instantly speed up your development process.

The book starts with you setting up the development environment that will enable you to complete the project that accompanies the book. From there on, the book explains additional tools that you can use in jQuery Mobile development, as well as tools that will assist you in making projects work best across all platforms. Furthermore, you will get a brief overview of developing for mobile devices and a brief look at RESS (responsive design + server side). Additionally, we will begin the development of our overall project, a mobile application for the fictional Anytown Civic Center.

You will then start putting together a touch-based navigation system as they link pages together and explore the various widgets and controls used to build the Civic Center application. The book will teach you how to retrieve data using PHP and use it within a mobile application, and show you how to create custom icons to replace the default ones in the application. Finally, some mobile best practices will be looked at that will benefit you as you go deeper into jQuery Mobile development.

By the end of the book, you will be well equipped with an extensive knowledge of JQuery, not only to build applications, but to effectively customise and maintain them.