Seriously helpful when getting started making iOS apps.

Link: http://iosboilerplate.com/

I’m so happy jQuery Mobile is being developed and supported by jQuery. Third-party mobile libraries built with jQuery are fine and all, but jQuery mobile is seriously legit. From their site: “A unified, HTML5-based user interface system for all popular mobile device platforms, built on the rock-solid jQuery and jQuery UI foundation. Its lightweight code is built with progressive enhancement, and has a flexible, easily themeable design.” Sounds good to me!

Link: http://jquerymobile.com/

Check out this CSS framework. I’m so happy to see things like this. CSS was a tremendous step up from styling things with tables and HTML attributes. Yet, CSS lacks certain features that programming languages (or even scripting languages) enjoy, like the ability to set variables to name an obvious one. Less doesn’t solve this problem (one would need to look for CSS preprocessors for that) but the Less framework certainly alleviates many of CSS’s shortcomings. One might say it helps to close the gap between what CSS is capable of doing and what it needs to do to achieve best practices in terms of responsive layouts.

Less is quite small and does require JavaScript (what doesn’t, these days?) so it may not be able to do everything you might ask for. It only has 4 layouts but they are well-suited for most of what is desired in a cross-platform website or web app these days. Definitely worth looking ito.

Link: http://lessframework.com/#how

I first used Titanium some years ago. I am happy to see how it has developed and grown. It is a robust and powerful framework consisting of a tremendous amount of modular plug-and-play functionality. It ain’t cheap, but then, quality rarely is. Recommended.

Link: http://www.appcelerator.com/

I love it! jQTouch uses Sass (a CSS3 pre-processor) along with hardware-accelerated native webkit applications on supported iOS devices and lots of other goodies. It works on Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and even supports iPad with minimal modifications. It’s on Github so you can find some iPad forks and whatnot. I wouldn’t swear by it and I would certainly look for known bugs to make sure it can do what I want, but in my experience it is a breeze to use. I’ve been able to sit in a room with strangers and bust out a simple webapp that everyone in the room can access on their mobile devices in a matter of minutes. Moving between different “pages” of the app is a breeze using HTML divs and anchor links. Transitions, themes, all highly modular and easy to swap out. I wouldn’t use it for everything, but sometimes it’s just the trick.

Link: http://www.jqtouch.com/

Check out this article by Ethan Marcotte on responsive web design.

Excerpt:

Mobile browsing is expected to outpace desktop-based access within threeto five years. Two of the three dominant video game consoles have web browsers (and one of them is quite excellent). We’re designing for mice and keyboards, for T9 keypads, for handheld game controllers, for touch interfaces. In short, we’re faced with a greater number of devices, input modes, and browsers than ever before.

Link: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

Check out this Smashing Magazine article on UX design for smartphones. Good overview of gestures and designing for touch, as well as many other considerations that designers coming from other fields may not consider when starting out in mobile.

Link: http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/06/not-your-parents-mobile-phone-ux-design-guidelines-smartphones/

You know I’m a geek when I have an affinity with adjectives like beautiful when describing boilerplate code. Yet, there is something beautiful about clean boilerplate. It is like starting right ab initio, from the fundamentals. If you start with messy or ugly boilerplate code, it just feels wrong from the get-go.

In that vein, check out Skeleton. While the site may not be as slick as some of the grid frameworks out there, I think you’ll find it suitably full-featured. It even has WordPress and Drupal plugins, among others! While it is certainly barebones, this one is definitely a useful addition and strong contender for HTML/CSS/JavaScript application development framework or even just plain old web development.

Link: http://www.getskeleton.com/

Looks pretty interesting. I’m curious what the options are in terms of group video chat and so on. I know Google is working in this area but it seems there is a lot of opportunity in the mobile space, especially with the extra screen real estate offered by tablets.

Link: http://www.fring.com/

Ever considered making Android apps? I am always recommending it to my friends. Even if you have an idea that you think is silly, or just something that you can only imagine you yourself using, it’s still worth looking into it. If it isn’t that difficult to make, you might be surprised how many other people will use the app. For instance, if you work as a housepainter or carpenter and find yourself needing to do the same calculations day-in day-out, why not make an app for that? You might be surprised how easy it is, and how many other people would find it useful.

While iPhone and other application frameworks have a lot to offer, I find Android to be the easiest to get started with. There is so much documentation, so many great tutorials, forums and so on — truly, almost no background in programming is needed to pick up Android and run with it. (Though it certainly wouldn’t hurt!)

So, if you enjoy mobile apps and have ever considered making them yourself, why not give it a try?

Link: http://developer.android.com/index.html