jQuery Mobile really ups the ante for us mobile developers. It gives us a powerful framework to develop web applications tailored for mobile devices and have them act like native applications. We hope to take your jQuery Mobile skills to the next level with this book by having you develop projects that you may encounter in your everyday life, instead of a bunch of one-shot conceptual projects. We have one main project that we will build over a series of chapters and then some standalone projects that will explore some more advanced features.
Chapter 1, Getting Started, in this chapter you will begin setting up your development environment to be able to complete the project accompanying the book. You will learn the various methods to obtain and use the framework in a small sample application.
Chapter 2, Tools and Testing, in this chapter you will look at some additional tools that you can use in jQuery Mobile development. Apart from the different tools, this chapter will also look at some means of testing that will assist you in making sure your projects work well across all platforms.
Chapter 3, Mobile Design, in this chapter you will get a brief overview of developing for mobile devices. The topics will cover responsive web design techniques, including media queries, features, and device detection, and will take a very brief look at RESS.
Chapter 4, Call to Action – Our Main Project, in this chapter you will begin the development of our overall project, a mobile application for a fictional Anytown Civic Center. The application will display a list of upcoming events, allow users to enquire for the events, and serve as a mobile website for the civic center itself.
Chapter 5, Navigation, with this chapter, you will start putting together a touch-based navigation system as we link the pages together. You will also get to see the use of transitions.
Chapter 6, Controls and Widgets, in this chapter, you will explore the various widgets and controls that we will use to build the Anytown Civic Center application. You will learn how to configure and initialize widgets, and control the app with various input events.
Chapter 7, Working with Data, in this chapter, you will look at how we can retrieve data using PHP and use it within our mobile application. We will look at forms, retrieving data from a database, validating input before inserting it back into the database, and displaying information to the application user.
Chapter 8, Finishing Touches, in this chapter, you will finish up the Anytown Civic Center mobile application by creating custom icons to use in the application to replace the default ones. We will also begin exploring how this application can be turned into a native mobile application with a basic introduction to Cordova.
Chapter 9, The Next Level, in this chapter, you will look at using jQuery Mobile with the Node.js platform, integrating jQuery Mobile with the Backbone.js and RequireJS libraries, and build a basic WordPress mobile theme that will use this framework.
Chapter 10, Mobile Best Practices and Efficiency, in this chapter, you will look at some best mobile practices and some optimization tips and tricks that will benefit you as you go deeper into jQuery Mobile development.
For you to get the most out of this book, we recommend you to go along with the projects and code, so for this, you would need to have access to some sort of development device, be it a laptop or desktop. We recommend these, so that you can get the most out of the book by developing locally. You could, however, do this from your tablet device as well using one of the cloud based IDE systems such as jsFiddle, Codeanywhere, and so on. We will walk you through setting up a powerful and free environment with Aptana Studio and XAMPP.
You've started down the path of jQuery Mobile, done a small application using some basics of the framework. Now, if you wish to master some of jQuery Mobile's higher level advanced topics, you need not look further. Go beyond jQuery Mobile's documentation and master one of the hottest mobile technologies out there. Previous JavaScript and PHP experience can help you get the most out of this book.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Double-click on the .DMG file you just downloaded and drag the XAMPP folder into the Applications directory."
A block of code is set as follows:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquerymobile/1.4.5/jquery.mobile.min.css" /> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js "></script> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquerymobile/1.4.5/jquery.mobile.min.js"></script>
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<p>Welcome to the website for Anytown Civic Center. We have a lot of great upcoming events for you to check out.</p>
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Double-click on the installation file and you will be asked to select a language. Make your choice and choose OK."
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