Mobile Javascript Application Development: Bringing Web Programming to Mobile Devices [Brossura]

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through O'Reilly Media's blogger review program.
The central message of this book is that the mobile web can no longer be treated as a second class citizen. Mobile friendly websites and apps are now a necessity. Many questions come up when actually addressing the issue of making a web app mobile friendly. Device OS, screen size and browser features differ significantly, even within a single manufacturer. Several tools exist to bridge this gap and the author provides an introduction for three: PhoneGap, Sencha Touch and JQuery Mobile.
The author starts by giving a brief overview of HTML5, covering the history and some of the nuances that go along with the migration to the new standard. He covers the differences in mobile browsers and which of the new features they will support and which elements are no longer supported. Next is a set of best practices for JavaScript. The author clearly states that this book is not for beginners and this chapter is a good place to check if that includes you or not. I consider myself intermediate with JavaScript and jQuery, I have read a few books and am familiar with the basics of object oriented programming. I felt comfortable with this chapter and learned a couple tips and tricks that I found helpful.
The next three chapters are devoted to the tools mentioned above. JQuery Mobile is the easiest to learn and implement, but is limited in several ways. If you have a firm understanding and experience using Ext.js(I do not) then Sencha Touch will be an easy and more flexible route. PhoneGap is probably the tool that most developers are looking for. It provides a way to create native applications on multiple platforms based off of your web app. This has several advantages and allows the option to easily monetize your app.
Overall, this book was not what I expected. I have a decent background with JavaScript and I have published a couple Android applications, I also have a web app that I would like to make mobile friendly. I was hoping to work through real world, fully function examples that demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of each tool. I started reading this book with minimal knowledge of PhoneGap and I was interested in it as a way to deploy my existing Android applications on multiple platforms and maybe even create web versions using JavaScript. I feel like I didn't gain anything by reading this book. I don't intend that to be negative feedback for the author, I just was not the target audience for this book and now that I think of it, I'm not sure who really is.

This is an excellent book that focuses on using Javascript (and only Javascript with HTML and CSS) for mobile application development. The author introduces HTML5 in chapter 1 which is a must for developing using Javascript on the mobile devices. He also introduces the Modernizer library to test for HTML5 features for cross-browser compatibility. Snippets of code that introduce the reader to Geolocation, Orientation, Device motion, Network connectivity, Canvas, Client-side storage, etc, set the base for the future chapters. Chapter 2 is a quick introduction on using Javascript productively by avoiding common pitfalls.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide a detailed coverage on jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and PhoneGap. These are the leading frameworks for Javascript Mobile development. Chapter 6 completes the gap by going over debugging and testing using Jasmine and Siesta and other tools, like Adobe Shadow and iWebInspector. Chapter 7 concludes by providing a comparison of various frameworks and when to use what.

Overall, this book is very pleasant to read and is really geared towards folks evaluating different JavaScript mobile frameworks and didn't know where to start. This book will make it easy for you to decide what's suitable for your application.

I have not read the book. The preview does not tell me anything usefull about it. Not even a table of contents and from what I do see, it looks like a tiny book that tries to cover everything from JQuery Mobile to Sencha Touch to PhoneGap. Can't imagine that there is any depth in the book :-(