In the mobile industry, it has quite a few of frameworks available aiming to create a mobile web app rapidly. To help you start up your mobile development, I have done some research on all mobile frameworks, and below is the list. I have used jQTouch before, it’s pretty easy to implement but definitely has a lot of room of improvement.
Zepto.js Zepto.js is a minimalist JavaScript framework for mobile WebKit browsers, with a jQuery-compatible syntax. The goal: a 2-5k library that handles most basic drudge work with a nice API so you can concentrate on getting stuff done. Zepto.js is currently in early beta, and you can help to make it awesome by contributing code, documentation and demos.
Appcelerator
Use Appcelerator Titanium to build mobile apps for iPhone & Android and desktop apps for Windows, Mac OS X & Linux from Web technologies
DynamicX DHTMLX Touch is an HTML5-based JavaScript library for building mobile web applications. It’s not just a set of UI widgets, but a complete framework that allows you to create eye-catching, cross-platform web applications for mobile and touch-screen devices.
Sencha Sencha Touch, the first HTML5 mobile JavaScript framework that allows you to develop mobile web apps that look and feel native on iPhone and Android touchscreen devices, has just hit the big 1.0. And best of all, it’s completely free to use.
jQuery Mobile 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.
jQTouch A jQuery plugin for mobile web development on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other forward-thinking devices.
Wink ToolKit Wink toolkit is a mobile JavaScript framework for building webapps on iPhone, iPad and Android
iUI
iUI is a framework consisting of a JavaScript library, CSS, and images for developing advanced mobile webapps for iPhone and comparable/compatible devices.
xUI
A super micro tiny dom library for authoring html5 mobile web applications.
iWebkit
WebKit is a file package designed to help you create your own iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad compatible website or webapp.
iWebAPP.net WebApp.Net is a light weight, powerful javascript framework taking advantage of AJAX technology. It provides a full set of ready to use components to help you develop, quickly and easily, advanced mobile web applications.
NimbleKit
NimbleKit is the fastest way to create applications for iOS. You don’t need to know Objective-C or the iOS SDK. All you need is to know how to write an HTML page with Javascript code.
MotherApp
The Quick, easy way to publish on iPad and Android.
RhoMobile
Rhodes is the cross platform smart phone framework for mobile application development, which allows developers to write smart phone native apps. It follows the MVC pattern. They have also started hosting the code on cloud called RhoHub . Apps built using Rhodes framework :: Sugar CRM, Pivotal tracker’s Track R, Wikipedia.
Ansca Mobile’s Corona SDK
Ansca Mobile’s Corona SDK is a simple-to-use mobile app development platform for iOS and Android.
TapLynx
A powerful iPhone framework.Rapidly develop iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Apps without learning Cocoa.
MoSync SDK
MoSync makes it easy, fun and cost efficient to develop mobile application for all the major platforms. Using C++ and a set of powerful APIs, you can harness the full power of modern smartphone platforms while still supporting Java ME devices using a single codebase.
SproutCore
SproutCore is an open-source framework for building blazingly fast, innovative user experiences on the web.
DraginFire SDK
iPhone + iPad Development in Windows without a Mac or Objective – C. Bring your App idea to life in standard C/C++ and never leave your Windows platform.
Unity Mobile
Build and deliver the best. Whether you are making a mobile website or publishing a mobile application, UNITY’s integrated platform is simple enough for any user, regardless of technical skill.
In computing terms, resolution independence UI is a technique to make elements on a computer or mobile screen can be drawn at sizes independent from the pixel grid. For Mobile devices this is done with CSS3 and Media Queries so that those with larger mobile screens and more compact screens can still view the UI at the same size.
As you can see, we’ve added rounded corners, an inner glow (using inset with -webkit-box-shadow), a drop shadow, text shadow, and padding to our element — all using em as our sizing unit. The only sizing which is not accomplished with ems is the background-gradient, which must be defined in percentage-based color-stops. As these color-stops are still relative to the size of the button itself, these values are inherently relative as well. To show off some different sizes for our button, we can easily just add a few classes like:
localStorage sets fields on the domain. Even when you close the browser, reopen it, and go back to the site, it remembers all fields in localStorage.
HTML5 Local Storage is based on named key/value pairs. You store data based on a named key, then you can retrieve that data with the same key. The named key is a string. The data can be any type supported by JavaScript, including strings, Booleans, integers, or floats.
var foo = localStorage.getItem("bar");
// ...
localStorage.setItem("bar", foo);
…could be rewritten to use square bracket syntax instead:
var foo = localStorage["bar"];
// ...
localStorage["bar"] = foo;
Notepod is a notepad shaped like an iPhone. Each notepod is 100 pages of 60 x 110mm double sided paper. The front has 52mm x 77mm blank space (the iPhone screen), the back is a 6mm grid.
The iPhone ui stencil kit is a stainless steel, laser cut stencil kit for drawing quick mock-ups and wireframes for iPhone apps. It also comes with a Zebra mechanical pencil.
The App Sketchbook has 50 Double-sided, perforated pages each with 3 actual sized iPhone templates. Each page also has has 20px ruler markings and a ruled section for notes.
Graffletopia’s stencil kit for Omnigraffle. It is for quick sketching of iPhone ideas. Use the outline for printouts so you can hand sketch as well. The symbols are meant as a check list for included features in your app development.
This is a plug-in to browser Mozilla FireFox for prototyping interface of iPhone applications for creating an iPhone mock-up. Currently Alpha – not compatible with FF 3.55.
Pencil is a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping. Pencil runs on the Mozilla Gecko engine, turning the Firefox browser into a sketching tool with just a 400-kilobyte installation package.
This plug-in combines Fireworks with some jQuery and PHP to give you a prototype you can not only view, but interact with, directly on your iPhone, just as if it’s a live app.
Liveview is an iPhone app that consists of two parts: the ScreenCaster and the Application itself. ScreenCaster launches a simple iPhone skin on your Mac. From the same network, launch the LiveView app in your iPhone. Whatever the ScreenCaster is highlighting is now seen in the LiveView App. It also interprets touches as mouse clicks, turning it into a two way interactive prototype.
Mockingbird is a web based mockup/wireframe tool built using the Cappucino framework, so there’s no flash to wrestle with. While you can’t actually design your mockups from an iPhone (who’d want to?), the tool does have some very handy features. You can drag elements onto the screen, create multiple pages, link to other pages and share directly from the web.
Pidoco is a web-based tool that lets you create clickable wireframes via drag & drop ui and then collaborate with remote users on each project. The tool also includes iPhone stencils.
iPhone mockup is a web based tool that is currently in Alpha release only. You can design your mockup as a hand sketch or illustration, and mockups can contain user-uploaded images and user-entered text. Your mockups will be accessible via url so they are unsecured.
The developer makes this perfectly clear and warns that he could discontinue hosting mockups at anytime, thereby deleting any work. That makes this a handy tool for quick and dirty mockups you want to print or share with someone on the fly, but not for much more.
Protoshare is a collaborative, web-based prototyping tool that helps teams visualize requirements for interactive projects and work together in real-time. It has an iPhone component that can be seen here.
With iPlotz you can create clickable, navigable wireframes to create the experience of a real website or software application. You can also invite others to comment on the designs, and once ready, you can then manage the tasks for developers and designers to build the project.
CogTool is a general purpose UI prototyping tool simply using a storyboard of your design idea with sketches, images or on a canvas. Demonstrate tasks on that storyboard, then press a button to produce a valid cognitive model predicting how long it will take a skilled user to complete those tasks.
Balsamiq mockups is desktop software that is designed to help teams or clients collaborate on wireframes and mockups. There are iPhone specific controls included.
OmniGraffle is award winning diagraming mockup or graphic design software. Combined with Graffletopia’s iPhone stencil kit, this software is a great addition to any app developers toolbox.
iRise for iPhones gives developers a way to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of Apple iPhone applications through pre-defined visualization widgets and templates that can be quickly assembled into a high definition mobile applications.
