My experience with Rails and jQuery mobile | Cookies HQ, Ruby on Rails and Javascript development agency in Bristol I recently had to develop a mobile version of Kyero.com, a Spanish selling and renting property website. The desktop website has been under active development for the past 6 years. It’s developed with Rails, and I had to plug my code around the existing one trying to minimise “new features == new files” impact. The whole mobile version was ready in around 5 days of development and we added 3 more days to polish the style and UX. Here is what I’ve learned. The debate between responsive VS specific app We obviously asked ourselves what the right choice was between them. Do your homework When developing a mobile app, it always helps to create initial on scale wireframes, so you can easily spot UX mistakes or overcrowded pages. Rails and jQuery mobile I first started to use Mobile_Fu for the mobile detection, but I wasn’t very happy with the way the plugin was behaving so I finally chose to write my own mobile detection engine. Mobile detection and Google site indexing Page caching Carousel Notes
14 DIY mobile app development resources for small businesses This post was updated April 8, 2014, to reflect the ever-changing mobile application development landscape. Many small businesses sill shrug off the idea of creating a mobile app but the case for doing so continues to become stronger, not just when it comes to engaging more effectively with customers but for empowering employees. I wrote about one example of the latter scenario last month: ski and board shop Mount Everest in Westwood, N.J., created a mobile app to extend its LightSpeed point-of-sale (POS) solution so that the sales team is alerted when priority orders arrive. Its app helps the retailer boost credibility with certain search engines by responding more quickly. "This was essentially the only way to play. We wouldn't be able to do what we are doing without it," said Ryan McGarry, manager of e-commerce operations for the retailer. I mentioned two similar examples involving FileMaker late last year.
jQuery gMap 2 - Google Maps API V3 gMap is a jQuery plugin that helps you embed Google Maps into your website. With less than 2 KB (minified and gzipped) in size it is very flexible and highly customizable Original version by Cedric Kasner, modified by Mario Estrada to use the Google Maps API V3. gMap 2.1.5 (includes source code and minified version) Contribute Fork it on GitHub and submit bug reports and pull requests. Default View Code: $('#map').gMap(); Custom Controls and Map Type* * This map will show your current location if your browser supports the Geolocation API and you allow it to run. Map Data Map data ©2014 Google Map Manipulation Code: Markers Map DataMap data ©2014 Google, INEGI, Inav/Geosistemas SRL, Mapcity Map data ©2014 Google, INEGI, Inav/Geosistemas SRL, Mapcity Kitchen Sink - Extended Usage Map DataMap data ©2014 GeoBasis-DE/BKG (©2009), Google Map data ©2014 GeoBasis-DE/BKG (©2009), Google This version uses the same documentation as the original version with the following differences: Aditional Methods
Integrating Rails and jQuery Mobile The mobile web is huge and it's continuing to grow at an impressive rate. Along with the massive growth of the mobile internet comes a striking diversity of devices and browsers. It's not all WebKit, it's definitely not all iOS, and even when it is WebKit there are a vast array of implementation differences between browser APIs. As a result, making your applications cross-platform and mobile-ready is both important and challenging. jQuery Mobile provides a way to jumpstart development of mobile-friendly applications with semantic markup and the familiarity of jQuery. Rails provides an easy-to-use application environment for serving that markup and managing the data that backs it. In this article, I highlight and then smooth over the rough edges of the integration between these two frameworks. All the examples and advice in this article are derived from the construction of a sample application that tracks the presence of employees in an office.
Organizing Mobile When it comes to organizing the content and actions on mobile, solid information architecture principles like clear labeling, balanced breadth and depth, and appropriate mental models remain important. But the organization of mobile web experiences also needs to: Align with how people use their mobile devices and why.Emphasize content over navigation.Provide relevant options for exploration and pivoting.Maintain clarity and focus.Align with mobile behaviors Article Continues Below In the previous part, we talked about the constraints and capabilities that make designing for mobile unique. Looking at this intersection at a high level can illuminate how people are typically using their mobile devices and why. Because they directly align with why people pull out their mobile devices, these behaviors often determine how your mobile experience can be structured and organized to meet people’s needs. Aligning with mobile behaviors also naturally aligns your website with real-world needs. Yahoo!
70+ Must Have jQuery Tutorials Welcome to day 7, the last installment of tutorial week on Designrfix. Today we have assembled an awesome collection of some wicked jQuery tutorials from around the Web. I am confident that these web design and development tutorials will arm you with all the necessary techniques in-order to achieve those latest web design trends. Lastly, it’s been an amazing 7 days and we are confident that these tutorials will arm you with all the latest tips and tricks to help you in evolving your design creations. Enjoy! Want more articles from tutorial week? HTML5 Tutorials: 30+ Useful Tips And Tricks To Get You Started CSS Tutorials: Web Design And Development Techniques 20 Fantastic After Effects Video Tutorials Cinema 4D Tutorials: Create Motion Picture Style FX (Part3) Cinema 4D Tutorials: Create Motion Picture Style FX (Part2) Cinema 4D Tutorials: Create Motion Picture Style FX (Part1) 100 Photoshop CS6 Tutorials 70 Awesome Illustrator Tutorials That Every Designer Should See Grid Accordion with jQuery
Glyphish – Great icons for great iPhone & iPad apps Add to home screen Support Development Add To Homescreen is a free, open source javascript software. It is released under the MIT License which basically grants you complete freedom in usage for open source and commercial applications. That being said the only way for me to subtract hours from my day work and keep implementing this script is through donations. Overview The script opens an always-on-top message inviting the user to add the application to the home screen. ATH by default looks something like this But appearance is customizable with plain old CSS. The script is compatible with iOS 6+ and Chrome 31+. Languages The message changed in v3 so unfortunately all the languages supported in v2 are not available anymore. Basic Usage v3 API changed drastically (sorry about that) and it’s not a drop in replacement for v2. The easiest way to use ATH is to link the script into your document HEAD and call the addToHomescreen() function as soon as possible. <head><title>Add To Home</title> ... Options Debug mode
10 Useful jQuery Plugins For Enhancing Your Website UX Incorporating jQuery effectively and modestly in your website build process is a great way to enhance and take your user experience to another level. Using jQuery plugins can be a great tool for helping display content to your users in a much more intuitive and interactive way. The jQuery community is fantastic, developers are consistently releasing new, quality jQuery plug-ins for us to incorporate into our websites. In this post I will take show you a collection of jQuery plugins that are really useful for improving your overall user experience on your website. Nivo Slider The Nivo Slider is a fantastic jQuery slider plug-in, it is available in two formats, one jQuery plug-in is a dedicated WordPress plug-in and the other is freely available for all websites. Isotope Isotope is a jQuery plug-in that can add some serious improvement to how your users navigate content displayed on a webpage. FlexSlider Mosaic Supersized jQuery Image Parallax jMenu Assign Dynamic Tag jQuery Tour
jQuery Mobile 101 View all articles jQuery Mobile is to mobile what jQuery UI is to desktop. It's a touch optimised framework that makes building mobile optimised sites and apps a breeze for anyone beginning in the world of mobile application development using web technologies. The team behind jQuery mobile have set out to make a framework that can be used along with jQuery core and make developing a mobile site as painless as possible, and they have pretty much delivered. The important thing to remember is that jQuery mobile is a mobile first framework and works just as well to help build apps for desktop browsers. Before you jump into jQuery mobile, make sure that it will support the platforms you are aiming for. We're going to build a simple application, one that you could build for your own site (if you have one), and give a very general overview of how to use jQuery Mobile. We are going to start with a basic page template, pretty much the same as when you would build any web site. <! <! ! ! A bit better.
Hide the Address Bar within Mobile Safari With both iOS and Android-driven devices using WebKit as their browser's rendering engine, web developers have many advantages: A rendering engine with capable of flawless CSS animationsA rendering engine that's fast...very fastA rendering engine that's modern and forward-thinking These advantages allow us to create web apps within that browser that look as good as native applications. If your goal is to create web apps that look like native applications, the details count. One of those details: hiding the address bar. You may think hiding the address bar within the mobile browser is difficult but you'd be surprised how simple it is. The JavaScript window.addEventListener("load",function() { setTimeout(function(){ window.scrollTo(0, 1); }, 0);}); The window.scrollTo method is the key to hiding the address bar. Bonus: META Tag for Bookmarked Sites If a user has added your web application to their springboard, the following meta tag can remove the top bar from the browser: And that's all!
Top 10 jQuery Mobile Code Snippets that you need to know jQuery Mobile is a framework for mobile web apps and mobile websites with an aim to provide a unified user interface system across many mobile device platforms such iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile. The framework is built on top of one of the most popular Javascript frameworks, jQuery. Followings are some of the most useful code snippets that I’ve used in my recent web app developed using jQuery Mobile framework. 1. If your list item or button has a long text, it will be truncated automatically by jQuery Mobile. For example, to disable truncation for buttons: To disable truncation for list descriptions: To enable truncation, set it to “white-space: nowrap;“. 2. jQuery Mobile has a number of page initialization events that you can use to trigger certain methods on page load. Javascript $('.my-page').live("pagecreate", function() { var randombg = Math.floor(Math.random()*4); // 0 to 3 $('.my-page').removeClass().addClass('bg' + randombg); }); 3. And to re-enable it: 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
FlexNav - Flexible, Device Agnostic Navigation A Device-Agnostic Approach to Complex Site Navigation FlexNav is a mobile-first example of using media queries and javascript to make a decent multi-level menu with support for touch, hover reveal, and keyboard tab input accessibility. Special attention is paid to touch screens using tap targets (the key feature of FlexNav). Note: If you find a bug, please file an issue and note device and browser versions. Download on GitHub → Basic Usage Start with a simple unordered list, adding in the class and data attributes:<ul class="flexnav" data-breakpoint="800"><li>... Add the small screen menu button somewhere outside your navigation markup:<div class="menu-button">Menu</div> Add flexnav.css to the head of your document:<link href="css/flexnav.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> Add jquery.flexnav.min.js before the closing body tag:<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.flexnav.min.js"></script> Initialize FlexNav right before your closing body tag:$(".flexnav").flexNav(); Options
Adaptive Images in HTML