Palm sponsoring jQuery's mobile initiative
One of the most popular JavaScript frameworks on the web these days is jQuery. It's used by some 31% of of the 10,000 most visited websites on the internet and companies like Microsoft and Nokia are looking to integrate the framework into their development tools. Just this past week, the organization responsible for jQuery launched a mobile initiative that aims to bring a unified user interface to a wide variety of web connected devices, and helping to sponsor that initiative is none other than Palm. Palm has long been a champion of web technologies (their operating system has a web runtime at its core), and this is big news that bodes well for both developers and consumers alike.
JavaScript libraries (and JavaScript in general) play a huge part in your every day web browsing experience. They power the vast majority of the websites you visit, enabling them to deliver interactive and dynamic content unlike the static websites that were prominent in the early days of the web. These libraries enable developers to create such rich content by incorporating pre-written pieces of code that include user interface styling, access to hardware and software services, and bridges to other software languages, meaning that they don't have to be written from scratch.
In a fashion similar to the Mojo JavaScript framework on which its SDK is built, Palm allows developers to utilize libraries like jQuery that include inbuilt styling options (pictured above) in native applications. What makes this is really cool, though, is that developers will soon be able to write web apps using frameworks such as jQuery and use a simple shim allow that would allow their app access to the underlaying hardware such as accelerometers and cameras. The translation to us non-developers? Slick looking, fully featured web apps that have many of the capabilities of native applications that can be found in online market places such as the App Catalog. Applications that will look and feel the same whether you're using them on a BlackBerry Torch, a Palm Pre Plus, or a Nokia N700.
There's a theme here. It stretches across all of the webOS development tools, and it spans across Palm's philosophies toward where mobile development is going. With the PDK, developers are already free to use any SDL, C, or C++ library they want so long as it compiles, and that's a huge amount of freedom. Palm has shown its support for write-once-deploy-anywhere heroes appcelerator, and its latest move with supporting jQuery's mobile efforts proves that Palm, with HP's backing, is going to continue to foster innovation in the web.
Via: Palm's Developer Center blog; Source: jQuery Mobile Blog
