10 HTML5 Mobile Frameworks for Rapid App Development

Mobile development used to be a difficult task. Screen resolution challenges, cross browser inconsistencies – just a bunch of mambo jumbo that you don’t want to deal with – especially when all you want to do is code. While developing robust applications has always been the main goal, the rapid changes in mobile technology has also spawned a bunch of new tools that are within our grasps. Many of these issues have also been solved through various UI frameworks and libraries.

Nowadays, coders have a plethora of options when in comes to developing mobile websites. Beautiful layouts and fancy widgets, ones that can be developed by using awesome (and mostly Free!) mobile UI sofware. Check out these 10 mobile frameworks that will get you developing your next app in no time.

You should also check out 8 must have apps for your Smart Phone for 2014.

Ready to get started? Here we go:

Jo HTML5 Mobile App Framework

One of the best lightweight HTML5 mobile app frameworks, Jo delivers a flexible event model, UI widgets, a light data layer and a wrapper for sound. This framework requires a native wrapper and minified, it only takes 12 Kb, which is around 25x less then jQuery Mobile. Jo HTML5 Mobile App Framework is optimized for iOS, Android (even version 1.6), WebOS usage, Blackberry and Symbian.

xui.js – A Simple Javascript Library

XUI is one of the smallest frameworks that run across all the devices in the mobile landscape. This Javascript Library doesn’t try and dictate a widget paradigm or a page structure. HTML and CSS can do remarkable job rather the DOM as most of the mobile applications include lists and buttons. Being a simple and micro Javascript library, xui.js has super tiny 10.4kb size. It is only library for IE Mobile, BlackBerry and WebKit.

DHTMLX Touch – HTML5 JavaScript Framework for Mobile

DHTMLX Touch is one of my favorite free open source JavaScript libraries, used for developing HTML5-based mobile web apps. It is a complete framework, allowing developing robust web applications that trouble-free runs on iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms. With this HTML5-based JavaScript library, you can create cross-platform web applications for mobile and touch-screen devices. One of the best things about DHTMLX Touch is it delivers simple solution for customizing the existing functionality of the library and adds new UI components.

jQWidgets

jQWidgets is one of the excellent frameworks, based on jQuery for developing professional web applications and mobile apps. jQWidgets is created entirely on open standards and technologies such as HTML5, CSS, jQuery, JavaScript, and SVG. Over 30 WAI-ARIA accessible UI components are included in jQWidgets that created from scratch based on the jQWidgets Framework.

Some of its excellent components and features are:

• jqxDocking – widget which allows you to manage multiple windows
• jqxTreeMap – an unique widget for displaying hierarchical data as a set of nested rectangles
• jqxScrollBar – a scroll bar widget, which can turn any boring/ugly scroll bar into a beautiful one
• jqxDataAdapter – a jQuery plug-in which simplifies data binding, data formatting and data operations
• jqxResponse – a plug-in which provides information about the OS, Browser, View Port, Device Type and common features of the Device like Touch Support, Size, SVG, Canvas and VML support

jQWidgets has multiple built-in ready to use and cross-browser compatible themes that helps developers to create theme quickly for the user interface of your application.

Titanium Mobile Development Environment

Appcelerator Titanium is an open and extensible development environment that helps to create remarkable native applications for various mobile devices and operating systems like Android, BlackBerry, iOS, hybrid and HTML5. The best thing about this framework is it includes more than 5,000 devices and mobile operating system APIs such as Alloy. Alloy is an MVC framework as well as Studio – which is a powerful Eclipse-based IDE. Also included is Cloud Services for a ready-to-use mobile back-end.

Davinci SDK

Davinci SDK is IDE built around Eclipse that created to help you develop HTML5 web applications. It is combination of different types of frameworks like Handlebars, Backbone, jQuery Mobile, KnockOut, Underscore, and so on that helps you in HTML5 web app development. It delivers convenient presets and editor through which HTML5 content may be created devoid of a single line of coding. An easy integration for 3rd party open APIs are also provided by Data Binding tool.

Junior

Junior is another jQuery based HTML5 front-end framework, used for developing mobile apps that look and works like native. Davinci SDK is based on Zepto.js (a smaller jQuery-like library) and has integrated with Backbone. Junior uses Ratchet CSS for its UI components. Ratchet is utilized to prototype iPhone apps with simple JS components, HTML, and CSS. This outstanding framework aims to be small and light.

Lungo

Lungo is one of the oldest in HTML5 mobile app development fields. It is also one to consider when other frameworks are not powerful enough. It is similar to jQuery Mobile in structure where HTML is a driving point and CSS/JavaScript is used to enhance it. It is considered as one of the better HTML5 mobile frameworks that are easy to learn and implement. I strongly recommended Lungo if you’d like to to develop apps that don’t look similar to native apps.

Trigger.IO

Trigger.IO is not a HTML5 framework, but it’s used to create hybrid mobile applications. With Trigger.IO, developers can use any framework and develop anything and can deploy it as a native app. It is light and way faster than PhoneGap. Although, it is a lot like PhoneGap – because of the native UI components that is built in.

Wijmo – jQuery UI Widgets

Wijmo is a good compilation of UI Widgets built on JavaScript, CSS3, SVG, and HTML5. It is one of the greater extensions of jQuery UI, with every widget you can think of. What I especially like with Wijmo is its standards and high quality of a UI framework system. Did I mention – all of Wijmo’s widgets are ThemeRoller-ready?

In Closing

I didn’t want to name this article “15 frameworks …” because there are also some outstanding software collected by Ethical Web which is not mentioned here. Take a look and enjoy them too.

On a similar note, read stunning UI design concepts for your mobile device.

Finally, let it be known that these are indeed real good mobile UI frameworks. Some of the best even – for 2014 at the very least. Developers can use them to create remarkable mobile application for various operating systems. If you know some more frameworks that we missed in this list, please leave a comment. Otherwise – go ahead and try them out!