Review: jQuery Mobile by Jon Reid

• July 17, 2011
• James Skemp
• review

A great introduction to jQuery Mobile development

While jQuery Mobile has not yet had a final release, a number of alphas, and most recently a beta, have been released.

When a new technology or framework is released it's sometimes difficult to determine when the best time is to start learning about it. Generally I try to stay away until a final version is released, but since this project is tied to jQuery, I can only assume that good things will come from this framework. Additionally, they generally take things fairly slow when they release new versions, so even though this book covers an alpha release of jQuery Mobile, and is therefore a little out of date, I didn't think it would be too difficult to catch up.

And indeed it was not. Working through this small book over the course of a week, using the most recent release of jQuery Mobile, required the minorest of changes. In fact the only thing that really jumps out at me is that the back button is not enabled by default, per a recent change.

The contents of the book get you started with jQuery Mobile, assuming some very basic knowledge of jQuery. It starts with an introduction of the framework, then moves onto the structure of your content, page elements, theming, interacting with jQuery Mobile via JavaScript, and finally ends with a fully functional Twitter-based application.

Within the first three chapters I had ported some of my own content over to a jQuery Mobile application, so you can easily be up-and-running after just a few hours. However, the creation of an actual application during the last chapter was extremely beneficial, as it suggests a development plan for creating your own applications.

While I can't say I've read any of Jon Reid's works before (his name sounds semi-familiar though), I found his writing to be extremely easy to read.

For these reasons I say jQuery Mobile is a great introduction and will easily get you up to speed on the principals behind jQuery Mobile. Despite covering a pre-release version, I highly recommend this to anyone who wants an introduction to jQuery Mobile, given the length and price of the book. I think the principles laid out in this book will continue to serve you during development, so I give this book a 5 of 5 stars.

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