9 Mobile Framework to Kick Start Your Mobile Development Career

Written by Kevin Liew on 07 Feb 2011
234,121 Views • Mobile Development

Introduction

Mobile development has been growing since the day Apple introduced iPhone. Mobile browser has never been so robust. It supports HTML5, CSS3 even with CSS animation. After that, Google introduced Android to join existing iPhone app developers in ushering in the mobile platform era. That leave a significant mark to the milestone of mobile development.

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.

This page has been translated into Spanish language by Maria Ramos.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • iWebkit iWebKit is a file package designed to help you create your own iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad compatible website or webapp.
  • WebAPP.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.
Join the discussion

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31 comments
Kath 12 years ago
I tried this jQTouch. Very slick in IPhone. But it's very slow when lading and page navigations. Not sure we need latest safari browser for higher performance in HTM5/JS.
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ElvisGottaSay 12 years ago
Missing the lightweight pure html5 framework called lungo.js very easy to learn
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ozeetee 11 years ago
Awesome !!! Thanks for sharing this :)
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ALi 12 years ago
Hi, We are interested to develop CRM business app for Android, iphone using multiplatform
But we are confused to select and finalize one platform.
Like Adobe Flex, Titanium, RhoStudio etc..
Which should we select to start working on it so its not be a problem in future for compatibility.
Any guide, Suggestions.
Thanks
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Karthikeyan 12 years ago
Kendo has released a HTML 5, jquery based framework for mobile UI. Data visualizes is a real addon.
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Volker 12 years ago
One more framework to consider. The-M-Projects it brings together JQM with MVC paradigm. http://the-m-project.org . It is available on a the very liberal MIT license.
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Michelle Lee 12 years ago
Awesome post.Here’s an all-in-one business application platform. It has everything you need to build custom business apps fasthttp://www.caspio.com/application-platform/
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Peter McLachlan 12 years ago
I agree with Matthew that PhoneGap should be on the list, especially for mobile apps! If you're looking to make your desktop site responsive for tablet and mobile, you should also take a look at Mobify.js. Mobify.js is an open source framework, and it provides complete responsive control with a single javascript tag. The open source project is on Github (search for Mobify), and a complete walk-through tutorial is available on http://cloud.mobify.com/
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Patrickz 12 years ago
Dylan Ng 12 years ago
thanks for the list.
btw, this website lists some popular mobile framework's demos:
http://frameworkdemos.com
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Greg 12 years ago
which of these do you think would be the best to create an offline/db, cross platform app?
Thanks!
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Cheryl Ray 12 years ago
Thanks for the frameworks you have provided in the post. It's really helpful for all dedicated mobile developer including me. I am definitely gonna use them.
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Alejandro Sánchez Acosta 11 years ago
Hi, I'm Alejandro Sanchez, developer in eMobc.com. You can use this framework to build native mobile applications using XML (definition of navigation, contents, screens, menus, ads, rotation, etc) for IOS, Android and HTML5 (JQuery Mobile).
You can download in github.com/emobc or in the official site: eMobc.com/download.php
We have released the 0.1 and we have a lot of work to do. Contributors are welcome !
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dilip 10 years ago
Hey i want to something hybrid app which is similar to truecaller and facebook app is this emabc framework will make my job easily
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Michael 9 years ago
I'd recommend V-Play from personal experience. V-Play is aimed at all levels of developer but has a very gradual learning curve, making it a great option for beginners.

http://v-play.net/

It's a cross-platform development framework based on Qt that can be used to develop both apps and games. You can develop your game on any system and deploy it to every app store, meaning you never have to use native SDKs.

They have a lot of beginner tutorials showing you exactly how to get started. There also a lot of in-depth tutorials like "how to make a Flappy Bird game".

http://v-play.net/
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