Moobile 0.1 Released

Written by Jean-Philippe Déry on 24 April 2012 – Posted under news

Moobile

Moobile is a mobile web application framework built on MooTools. It focuses on building mobile apps that behave as close as possible to their native counterparts, either on a mobile browser or on a webview wrapper such as Phonegap.

Moobile is also meant to be extended. I believe one of the strengths of a mobile web app is the ease of creating something entirely different. Moobile helps in this area by providing a structure as well as controls, view and controllers that can be easily extended to suit your needs.

Moobile relies on external stylesheets for presentation and animations which makes it easy to customize. Rules that should not be changed are marked with an / Important / comment. Following these notes will make your app less likely to break or behave strangely.

Moobile also includes a simulator which works in Google Chrome and Safari. This tool will help you develop your app faster as it will give you a good idea of how your app looks and behaves on different devices and orientations. Also, it’s a lot easier to debug and profile your code on a desktop browser. The simulator, however, is not meant to replace a real mobile browser. I encourage to test your application often (and early) in a mobile browser.

Supported platforms

Moobile currently works on Webkit-based browser and has been tested with Safari Mobile on iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S, iPad 2 and “the new iPad”. The simulator runs in both Google Chrome and Safari.

Future Plans

Apart from the usual bug fixing and performance enhancements, the next step is to extend its supported platforms, starting with Android. I’m also looking to make Moobile work with all major browsers supporting CSS transformations, transitions and animations such as Firefox and Opera.

I also plan on improving the simulator so it can simulate multi-touch gestures much like the iOS simulator.

How to help

There’s so much to be done and so little time. If you’re interested in helping, you can contact me at jeanphilippe.dery@gmail.com and we’ll see what can be arranged.

Get it!

Grab your copy at www.moobilejs.com. The project is also hosted on github at www.github.com/jpdery .

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