In this review we will be taking a look at the book “Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile”, from author and software developer Shane Gliser, and published by specialist publisher Packt Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-78216-006-9).

In particular we will be taking a look at the e-book version (using the Amazon Kindle) however the book is available in both printed and electronic formats available directly from the Packt site and other online vendors including Amazon.

Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile

As the author outlines in the opening of the book, “Mobile is the fastest growing technology sector in existence.” and anyone who develops mobile websites is likely to have seen the jQuery Mobile framework. However, with technology developments, particularly mobile and web based ones, moving so quickly it can be time consuming getting to grips with many of the features of a mobile framework especially when the framework itself is constantly evolving. Fortunately, this book covers most of the aspects a typical mobile developer may need and each is nicely highlighted with code examples.

The book uses version 1.3.0 of the framework(released February 2013) and since publishing the jQuery Mobile framework has already moved to version 1.3.1 (released April 2013) which includes almost 50 fixes and improvements.

The early part of the book talks a great deal about and walks through the process of paper prototyping. It is good to see a book of this nature place emphasis upon the importance of design techniques as these considerations, when employed effectively, can often save considerable time throughout the lifetime of a software development.

The book runs to 254 pages across 10 chapters covering the evolution of mobile app development starting with prototyping a jQuery Mobile application (using an example of a Pizza delivery company). The book then moves through analytics, third party API integration, templating, and content management systems. The last chapter brings together many of the previously demonstrated  techniques described in previous chapters through the building of a sample mobile application.

jQuery Mobile itself builds upon other jQuery frameworks, and utilises HTML5, so many developers may jump right in at the API integration chapters such as working with JSON or the Geolocation API (referencing the W3C geolocation API specification). Prior knowledge of development languages such as PHP, Java or JavaScript is expected, together with a grounding in HTML and jQuery. Access to a web server will also help a great deal when working through the examples.

There is a particularly useful example around RSS feeds and the example clearly demonstrates just what a small amount of the right sort of code can achieve. Following on from the RSS example is integration with the Google Feeds API for pulling feeds into a JSON format.

In Summary: Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile

Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile contains a lot of useful code examples which help demonstrate the various techniques involved in leveraging the jQuery Mobile framework. The book is not an introduction to jQuery and it also expects the reader to already have a good grounding of web development languages. However, for those already developing for the web who want to quickly get up to speed with what the framework can offer then this book is highly recommended.

Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile is currently available, from Packt Publishing, for around £27.99 (Paperback and eBook) and around £14.44 for the electronic edition (price checked 23rd May 2013) | Head over to Packt Publishing for more information on Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile.