by Joe Zhou

Late last year a client approached us to optimize their website for smartphones and tablets. When asked why they wanted a mobile site, they told us that 70% of their customers were college students and these students tend to use their smartphone to do just about everything online including shopping, gaming, social networking, etc. Because they built their website 5 years ago, it was not optimized for mobile devices. So it makes perfect sense to revamp the user interface and provide a better user experience on mobile for Generation Y.
 

Rocky Dev from Extreme Web Designs Labs shared the following insights on why jQuery Mobile is a popular tool of choice when it comes to developing mobile sites.

1.       jQuery Mobile is built on top of jQuery core. Hence, the learning curve is minimal for people who are already familiar with jQuery syntax.
2.       jQuery uses minimal scripting for laying out pages in HTML5 and CSS3.
3.       jQuery Mobile allows users to create themes with relative ease.
4.       The code is scalable and robust therefore it automatically scales to any screen.
5.       Its progressive enhancement approach brings core content and functionality to all mobile, tablet and desktop platforms and a rich, installed application-like experience on newer mobile platforms.
6.       jQuery Mobile boasts of ajax-powered navigation, thereby decreasing the amount of time one may need to browse the website.
7.       jQuery Mobile’s API supports touch events and mouse events usually associated with jQuery, making it completely cross-browser and platform compatible.
8.       jQuery Mobile provides animated page transitions for slick transitions and effects that are pleasing to the eye.
9.       jQuery Mobile is lightweight, uses minimal image dependencies and hence it is very fast.
10.   Built in controls are themable by the built in UI, and the UI supports the Touch Optimized interface.
11.   jQuery Themeroller can be used to build custom widget designs.
12.   jQuery Mobile is compatible with all major mobile platforms as well as all major desktop browsers, including iPhone, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Opera Mobile/Mini, Firefox Mobile, all modern desktop browsers, etc.
 
Because of our team’s extensive experience on jQuery, it didn’t take us long to get familiar with jQuery Mobile and run with it. We were able to turn around a brand new mobile site within one month for the client. The client was very pleased with our quick turnaround and our ability to find the best solution to meet their needs.