iWebkit vs. JQTouch vs. iUI

Question

Hello,

I am going to develop a content rich application that ideally should have been an iPhone-app, but since I'm short on time, I will stick with technologies that I can, such as JQuery, CSS and HTML. The more mobile devices my site runs on besides iPhone, the better.

A brief search on the web leaves me with the impression that there are three tools I may use: iWebkit, JQTouch and iUI. I have toyed about with JQTouch, which I find impressive and simple to use.

With simplicity comes lack of customizability; I would very much like to have sliders and other cool features in my GUI.

Any comments on which of these three to go for?

Answer 1

I've gone with JQTouch for some prototyping as it seemed the best fit, and the most convenient for my needs.

Yet I would not recommend to build your main business around a webbased iPhone app. Even though it has quite a good set of features, it just doesn't feel responsive enough, and getting to get the app look perfectly like UX designed it can be some pain in the ass, as not the whole set of iPhone UI elements are implemented.

Yet I have to say that it was a matter of minutes to get a service-consuming app running that looks like a real iPhone app.

Answer 2

I have done a short list of frameworks for this type of development see here and am working on an article comparing but the holiday and work intervened.

Personally i have done a site in iUI which was a conversion from a Mac Widget, so reused a lot of code. It was relatively easy to do, the code is solid (for iUI) and there is a site where there is support.

JQTouch looks good and so does iWebkit. Quickconnect is well supported and has a book associated with it (which by now should be wildly out of date) and Quickconnect claims to be useable for other mobile platforms as well.

Only hasving lloked i would probably go for JQTouch next time around as it will have mainstream support just with it being based on JQuery.

Answer 3

I've talked about this subject a couple of days ago in a WebTuesday meeting, here are the slides of the presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/akosma/webtuesday-mobile-web-applications-framework-overview

I talk about the following frameworks / technologies:

• iUI
• jQTouch
• WebApp.net
• iWebKit
• SproutCore / Cappuccino
• Yahoo! Blueprint

I personally have used iUI, and then later jQTouch, which I literally fell in love with.

Answer 4

Jqtouch has the community support and also certain very helpful libraries now for persistence HTML5 support with inmemory db and even more so very fluid appearence.

Answer 5

I actually just finished writing and article comparing iUI and jQTouch. In my opinion, go with jQTouch because it covers a greater selection of WebKit browser phones like the Palm Pre, Droid and Nexus One.

It will be a slightly larger in file size because it includes the core jQuery library. But if you are already using jQuery in your site, that shouldn't matter.

You check out my article here: http://www.heinencreative.com/archives/articles/iui-vs-jqtouch/

Answer 6

I've started with iUI a way back but i'm now using jQTouch wich i find much better, specially if you like working with jQuery like me. Havent tried iWebkit though, but from what i've seen of it it can't compete with JQT.

Answer 7

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