Mobile Web Development with jQuery Mobile

Last night the Tampa Bay Mobile Development Meetup hosted a presentation on jQuery Mobile with speaker Raymond Camden. The presentation was given online but the group met at K-Force in Tampa and participated remotely.

JQuery Mobile is a fairly new HTML5-based user interface system that aims to simplify the process of designing and developing mobile websites and mobile apps for all popular devices. While it’s still a relatively new platform and has some slight performance issues to straighten out, all in all it is a very promising system.

One important point that was made, which was not specific to jQuery Mobile but rather about mobile websites in general was that redirecting mobile users to a mobile version of your website without offering any way for them to exit the mobile view and return to your main website is not a very user-friendly approach. In fact, it may make most sense to simply have a banner at the top of your main website that will appear for mobile users, giving them the option to view the mobile version of the website rather than just automatically redirecting them.

Anyway, overall it was a good presentation and a nice opportunity to expand our knowledge of ways to help our clients take their online business mobile in a streamlined way