If you are a JavaScript newbie eager to dive into creating rich mobile web applications, this book is for you. It is structured in a very clear and intuitive way, introducing the most useful HTML5 features, some JavaScript performance tips, jQuery mobile and Sencha Touch examples and illustrates even how PhoneGap works.
The author actually goes quite into detail on some HTML5 APIs like the local storage, application cache and geolocation. Not only it emphasizes their concepts but also provides valid practical code samples. An entire chapter is dedicated to JavaScript productivity tipps. This probably to bring the reader on an appropriate level of JavaScript knowledge for the following chapters. After these kind of introductory chapters, the real mobile oriented topics begin by first introducing jQuery mobile, then Sencha Touch and towards the end PhoneGap. The jQuery mobile and Sencha chapters describe the different features provided by the frameworks on the example of a todo app. Hence, a lot of code samples are provided. The book ends with a final chapter about debugging and testing tipps, mentioning the iWebkit inspector and testing frameworks like Jasmine.
Résumé
Personally, I expected the book to go more in detail on how to develop mobile apps with JavaScript in conjunction with some of todays popular JavaScript frameworks like Backbone. Instead, the first chapters are mostly just introductory which (if you did already extensively work with JavaScript) you can just directly skip. The core parts, the jQuery and Sencha Touch chapters then provide some quite detailled technical level.
But still, all in all, the book is something for you if you're a complete newbie in this area, otherwise you might be better served with one treating some more advanced topics.
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