JavaScript based iPhone UI framework

Question

We have a push based web-application. Recently, we planned to make an iPhone app for it. Much like Facebook has it's iPhone application as well as web presence. We are looking for a UI framework that can get us going quickly. I've leafed through PhoneGap and couple other JS based UI frameworks mentioned here. I am bit unsure what can suit us the best. So, I am looking for your suggestions.

Our constraints are as follows:

• The framework should be JS based. We all are web-devs and want to avoid learning Objective C.

• Framework should support iPhone's capabiilities as smoothly as a native app does. If not, we will prefer a JS framework which is the smoothest of all JS frameworks. So, this is the most important constraint.

• It should support smooth swipe through screens, support rotation. Nice, if it can capture shake as well. But shake does not take preference over a better framework without shake support.

• Nice to have -- with little or no modification in code, if the framework is supported on other touchscreen phones as well. Android and Symbian would be suffice. But again, we are focused on iPhone for now.

I am a bit curious to know what can be the best choice to start development with. I will be thankful if you share your experience with pros-and-cons of the framework that you have used.

Thanks
Nishant

Answer 1

I have been playing with following frameworks.

• Jo
• Sencha Touch
• jQuery Mobile

These are for serving Web based mobile sites, they can then in turn be made into Apps for Android or iOS using PhoneGap

Of the 3, Sencha is the more mature project and has the most things out of the box. Jo looks very promising and would probably directly compete with Sencha. jQuery mobile is very interesting but just far to early to do any production code with it, too rough around the edges. jQuery mobile takes a different approach to the others as it is html based and it interperates the attributes on tags to turn things into tableviews or menus.

jQuery mobile is quicker to hack together and get your head around, where the other two take a little bit more thinking. But once you figure them out its easy enough.

If you don't want to serve the site via a url at all and want to just build an app then Appcelerator is the way to go. You write code in JS and it makes native Android or iOS apps for you. You will get access to pretty much the full Android/iOS api.

I have coded with appcelerator, however I am no longer going to use it and use one of the above frameworks, probably Sencha for just now. I can get access to the device native apis via PhoneGap and for simpler apps give a great experience cross device via a url.

In about 6 months, or sooner, I think jQuery mobile will be the daddy...