jQuery Mobile Advanced - More jQuery Mobile and jQuery Mobile Themes

The second two of my three article series on jQuery Mobile have been posted to the MSDN Magazine Script Junkie Site.  I hope that they are helpful to you. 

Article 2: More jQuery Mobile 

There’s no doubt that mobile Web applications are here to stay. As I said at the start of the previous article in this series, talk to any C-level executive at a major company or any technology startup, and they’ll tell you about mobile apps.

jQuery Mobile (jQM) provides a JavaScript framework that allows developers to easily add a mobile look and feel to their Web applications. In this article I’ll dig into some advanced features of jQuery Mobile that—with some programming—a developer can use to provide an application that looks and feels very similar to a native app running on a device. Here’s what I’ll cover:

• $.mobile. You’ll learn what the $.mobile object is, how to use it and how to set values globally in an application.
• ListView.  We previously looked at the ListView at a high level. In this article I’ll describe more advanced features of the ListView that developers can use to provide the mobile equivalent of the iOS UITableView and the Android Listview.
• Navbar.  Native applications typically have a navbar that provides navigation for an application.  I’ll go into the more advanced concepts of the navbar, which let you provide users with a consistent navigation experience across an application.

Article 3: jQuery Mobile ThemesThe first article (Introduction to jQuery Mobile) in this series looked at the subject of themes at a high level and at themes available in jQuery Mobile (jQM). In this, the third of three articles on jQM, I show how to build a custom theme using the Theme Roller, as well as look at some custom themes that allow a mobile Web application to look more like an iPhone, Android or Windows Phone application.

I'm on the Tablet Show to talk MonoTouch and Mono for Android

Carl and Richard talk to Wally McClure about building mobile applications for iPhone and Android using MonoTouch and Mono for Android (respectively). The conversation starts out with Wally's original interest in the Mono tools, being able to leverage his code and skills in C# for mobile development. From there Wally drills into the challenges of tooling across platforms (testing frameworks, etc) as well as dealing with fragmentation of operating systems and SDKs - a bigger issue in Android than iOS, but still an issue.

Link: http://www.thetabletshow.com/default.aspx?showNum=67

Beating the Android Fragmentation Monster with .NET, C#, and Mono for Android - Article

Much has been made about fragmentation of the Android platform. The truth is that the Android platform is not as fragmented as developers think. Google provides a set of libraries that allow older versions of Android to get support for newer APIs. In this article, I'll create a version of the Star Trek navigation application (from my previous column) that runs on Android 2.x to 4.x for handsets and tablets.

The Android Support Package is a set of static libraries with additional APIs that can be used by an application. These libraries back port some newer APIs to older versions of Android. At the current time, there are two versions of the Support Package.

The v4 Support Package is designed to bring Fragment and other support to Android 1.6 (API Level 4) and later. If a program needs to use some new features and run on Android 2.2, this is the library that it needs to use. Our sample application will use the v4 Support Package.

The v13 Support Package is similar in concept to the v4 Support Package. This package requires Android 3.2 (API Level 13) or later. It has some underlying implementation changes.

I hope you enjoy the article.

Learn Cross Platform Development for iPhone, iPad, and Android with LearnNowOnline, MonoTouch, and Mono for Android using .NET/C#

I would like to highly encourage you to learn Cross Platform Development for iPhone, iPad, and Android with LearnNowOnline, MonoTouch, and Mono for Android using .NET/C#. By taking your existing knowledge, you can build applications that are best of breed and share code between them across the the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms. Some of the courses include:

• Xamarin Tool with Various Mobile Platforms
• Xamarin Mobile and Web Services
• Xamarin Cross Platform and File Linking

I would not have done these videos if there was not tremendous value in the Xamarin technologies or their direction. I hope that they provide you value as you take up the iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Cross Platform Development with MonoTouch and Mono for Android

You are tasked with creating apps for the iPhone, IPad, and Android. You are a .NET developer. What should you do? Start with MonoTouch and Mono for Android. Along the way, you will want to check out my training class through LearnNowOnline.. The class is on how to architect your apps to be as cross platform as possible. I hope you enjoy the class.

Databases and Data with MonoTouch and Mono for Android

Learn Now Online (formerly AppDev) has just released a free section of one of my recent training series about relational databases with MonoTouch and Mono for Android. I hope you find it helpful and enjoying!

Android 4 Fragments with Mono for Android

With the release of Android 3.0, Google added support for larger displays and attention-grabbing UI designs and layouts. On a tablet screen, UI components can be used to present better information. How does Android do this? It has a technology called Fragments, and I'll look at its implementation in the currently shipping operating system, Android 4. (Let's get past all the jokes about Android and fragmentation on its device platform.)

For more information on this, check out my article at Visual Studio Magazine - http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2012/12/13/android-4-and-fragments.aspx