Overview

This is an introduction into qooxdoo's mobile framework. qooxdoo mobile provides a optimized widget set to build applications for mobile devices.

Supported Mobile Operating Systems

qooxdoo mobile was tested with the native browsers of the following operating systems:

  • iOS
  • Android 1.6+ (Stock Browser and Chrome Mobile)
  • Windows Phone 8
  • BlackBerry 10 OS

Supported Desktop Browsers

qooxdoo mobile was tested with the following desktop browsers:

  • Safari 5
  • Chrome 10+
  • Firefox 10+ (Experimental)
  • Internet Explorer 10+

Features

  • Mobile widget set
  • Theming via CSS and SCSS
  • Pointer events: pointerdown, pointerup, pointermove, pointerover, pointerout
  • Touch events: touchstart, touchmove, touchend, touchcancel
  • Gesture events: swipe, tap, longtap, dbltap, roll
  • Animations between pages
  • Fixed toolbars and momentum scrolling via iScroll
  • Basic PhoneGap support
  • Support for high-resolution displays ("Retina display support")
  • Built-in handling of high DPI images for variable pixel densities

API Documentation

Create a Mobile Application

To create a mobile application mobileapp in your home directory with your shell, change to your home directory (just cd). With a qooxdoo SDK available at /opt/qooxdoo-5.0.2-sdk, call the script as follows:

/opt/qooxdoo-5.0.2-sdk/create-application.py --type=mobile --name=mobileapp --out=.

Have a look into the API documentation of qx.ui.mobile.page.Page to understand the basic concepts of qooxdoo mobile.

To learn how to develop a basic mobile application, you should try the mobile tweets client tutorial.

If you are new to qooxdoo, make sure you have read the getting started tutorial to understand the basics of qooxdoo.

Environment Keys

The following environment keys are available:

  • qx.mobile.nativescroll: true|false - Whether to use native scrolling or iScroll for scrolling.
  • device.pixelRatio: Number - the ratio between physical pixels and device-independent pixels (dips) on the device.
  • device.type: String - Determines on what type of device the application is running. Valid values are: "mobile", "tablet" or "desktop".

Differences to Desktop Widgets

The qooxdoo mobile widget set is optimized for the use on mobile devices. In fact, the qooxdoo mobile widget set is up to six times faster than the desktop widget set on mobile devices. We have tried to keep the differences of the API as low as possible, so that a qooxdoo developer will have his first qooxdoo mobile application running within minutes. Of course, respecting the speed advantage, not all features of the desktop widget set could be retained. There are some differences, listed below:

  • Theming: The theming is done via CSS files. Have a look into the existing themes, to see how the styling is done. You can find the themes under framework/source/resource/qx/mobile/css/. To change the theme, just change the included CSS file in the index.html and change the loaded assets in your mobile application. There is a index.html file for the build version as well. You can find it in the source/resource/ folder of your application.
  • No layout item: Only a few, essential, styles are provided by a widget. You should set all other styles of a widget via CSS, using the addCssClass method of a widget.
  • No queues: Elements are created directly. There is no element, layout, display queue. Keep this in mind when you create and add widgets.
  • Layouts: Layouts are done via CSS(3). HBox / VBox layouts are implemented using the flexible box layout
  • qx.ui.mobile.page.Page: A page is a widget that provides a screen which users can interact with in order to do something. Most times a page provides a single task or a group of related tasks. A qooxdoo mobile application is usually composed of one or more loosely bound pages. Typically there is one page that presents the "main" view.

Demo Applications

To see qooxdoo mobile applications in action or to see how to implement an application, you can have a look on the following demo applications:

  • Mobile Showcase - see all mobile widgets in action
  • Mobile Feedreader - the feedreader as a mobile app. Using the same logic and models as the feedreader for desktop browsers does.

All applications can be found in the application folder of your qooxdoo checkout.

How to contribute?

You can contribute in different ways:

  • Testing: Test qooxdoo mobile on your mobile device and give us feedback.
  • Theming: You can optimize the current CSS files or even create your own theme.
  • Widgets: Widget / Feature missing? Create an widget an post it back to us.
  • Bugs: If you have found a bug, or when you have fixed it already, please open a bug report in the qooxdoo Bugzilla with the core-mobile component.
  • Devices: If you have an old smartphone (Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, WebOS, etc.) that you don't need anymore, you could donate it to qooxdoo. We would be happy to test qooxdoo mobile on it.
  • Discussion/Feedback: Please post questions to our mailing list.
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