Trendy people who like to analyze tech trends like to suggest that the smartphones are halfway to replacing every laptop and desktop. While this may or may not happen, Web designers who want to keep their jobs are thinking about the best way to present information on the small screen. It's not enough to assume that the browser will do an adequate job of formatting the data -- an assumption Web designers were able to make when they were creating for desktops. Now they also have to anticipate how things look on the small screen and how they react to touch events that are quite different from mouse clicks.
There are a number of great open source frameworks tuned to fit information into Web pages that respond to swipes and finger presses. jQuery Mobile is an excellent extension to the almost indispensible library for manipulating a Web page. It's possible to build out a menu-driven collection of Web pages, forms, buttons, and charts, all using HTML divs and spans. jQuery Mobile analyzes the nested collection of divs, then turns them into menu trees that work on the smartphone screen. Everything happens in the JavaScript layer.
Sencha Touch takes a different approach to the architecture but still delivers the same native-grade interface. Sencha developers lay out their application in JavaScript, then the tool turns it into the appropriate HTML divs and whatnot.
Sencha Touch is supported by Sencha, a commercial venture that builds other tools such as Ext JS for the main browser. The tool is available under the GPL 3.0 or a commercial license. Active forums and paid support make it a good choice.
Both of these tools offer fertile choices for HTML and JavaScript developers who want to squeeze their applications into the small screen. The results can work across many of the most popular smartphones, saving the developer the headache of writing in both Objective C and Java.
The Bossies 2011 index:
Bossie Awards 2011: The best open source software of the year
Bossie Awards 2011: The best open source applications
Bossie Awards 2011: The best open source desktop and mobile software
Bossie Awards 2011: The best open source application development software
Bossie Awards 2011: The best open source data center and cloud software
This slideshow, "Bossie Awards 2011: The best open source application development software," originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in application development and open source at InfoWorld.com.
