HOW TO: Make Your Mobile Websites Act More Like Native Apps

As smartphone sales continue to soar, more and more developers are focusing their efforts on building applications for mobile devices. Whether it is a native application or a mobile-optimized website, mobile innovation is taking place at a breakneck pace.
Native applications still have their place, but increasingly, the number of different device types, operating systems, and screen sizes make developing optimized mobile web apps more and more enticing. Historically, there has been a trade-off between the rapid, iterative, cross-platform nature of web applications versus the more standard UI, support for gestures, and multi-touch and hardware optimizations on the native side.
Fortunately, a number of different frameworks are making it easier and easier for developers to create mobile web applications that look and feel more like native apps. Here are six examples. If you don’t see your favorites on the list, add them in the comments below.

1. Sencha Touch

In June, Sencha, formerly Ext JS, launched its Sencha Touch HTML5 mobile framework. The cross-platform framework is compatible with iOS and Android devices and will be expanded to other platforms soon.

Sencha Touch combines a resolution-independent UI library, touch event management, support for geolocation and offline access, and special CSS and CSS3 capabilities.

Sencha is the company behind the Ext JS, jQTouch and Raphael projects, so the new framework packs some serious power. Check out this Touch Solitaire demo, especially on the iPad. The Drag & Drop support is really amazing.

2. SproutCore

SproutCore is an HTML5 framework that aims to help developers build desktop-caliber web applications that run in any modern web browser, without plugins. The lead developer recently quit his job at Apple to focus on the project full-time.

Check out this demo on an iPhone or Android device and I think you’ll agree, it’s pretty impressive stuff. By leveraging existing backends and taking cues from platforms like .NET and Cocoa, SproutCore is focused on offering scalable, robust performance in a web browser.

While not just for mobile apps, the HTML5 nature of SproutCore really makes it a good choice.

3. YUI 3.2

Later this month, Yahoo! will release the latest version of its YUI library of JavaScript utilities. YUI is a really impressive framework and the upcoming version includes even better support for touch and mobile devices.

Christian Heilmann wrote up a great preview of YUI 3.2.0 for Ajaxian that details some of the new additions.

Yahoo! continues to be one of the best resources for tools, libraries, utilities and documents for web and mobile developers.

4. jQuery Mobile

jQuery Mobile isn’t a full application framework like SproutCore or Sencha Touch, but the new initiative does aim to bring more native controls to mobile web apps.

Announced last week, the jQuery Mobile project will be a “complete, unified, mobile UI framework.” The core jQuery project will also continue to be optimized for mobile, but the jQuery Mobile project is focused on delivering a truly top-notch JavaScript experience and interface to the most-used smartphone web browsers.

The project is still in the early stages, but you can see what browsers and versions jQuery Mobile will support on this chart. The jQuery Core team is working to support all A and B browsers.

5. XUI

While developing Phonegap, the XUI team became frustrated with the existing JavaScript libraries and their performances on mobile devices.

XUI was created to work across mobile browsers, including WebKit, Fennec, and Opera. The goal is to provide lots of cross-compatibility without much of the overhead that can make traditional JavaScript libraries unsuitable for mobile devices.

6. iUI

iUI is an iPhone user interface framework designed to bring an iPhone-like experience to mobile web apps. It works with WebKit-based devices and includes a JavaScript library, CSS, and images.

It was originally started back in 2007 but has been steadily updated over the years to add support to more types of devices and even the iPad.

Let us know which frameworks you’re using to make your mobile websites act more like native apps in the comments.

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