I spend a lot of my time talking with developers and architects about how HTML5 fits into their mobile application strategy. SUP's Hybrid Web Container enables them to get the cross-platform advantage of HTML and JavaScript, and provides the security mechanisms, provisioning, and hooks to native device features they can't get through the browser.
In the Hybrid App Designer, we bundle jQueryMobile as the User Interface (UI) framework. The UI framework in an app is how a developer builds the app. It includes building blocks like a table-view, which can then have a number of configurations to meet the developer's use case. For instance, configuration 'a' sets each cell in the table to have a bold-face label, and a smaller detail text label. Config 'b' adds an icon to the left of each cell. Config 'c' adds a disclosure button to the right of each cell. And so on.
jQueryMobile is what you would call a 'JavaScript UI framework', because it is written in JavaScript, for use in HTML5 applications. It is a replacement (/supplement) to a native SDK, such as Cocoa Touch on the iOS platform. (Technically a supplement, since it leverages the WebKit runtime in the native SDK, but that's details...). There are a few other JavaScript UI frameworks that are increasingly relevant in the mobile application development space--especially in hybrid apps (web + native / container)--because they optimize the HTML development experience for mobile. There is a huge advantage to an SUP developer of using these JavaScript UI frameworks, because they tend to be open-source, have plenty of community, and allow really rich customization of SUP Hybrid Apps that run in the Container.
I wanted to show a few screenshots of some jQueryMobile-based hybrid apps we've developed in the Hybrid Web Container. These apps are connecting through SUP to enterprise data, can be managed and secured using the native functionality for SSO & authentication, and can be remotely provisioned on a role basis with the administrative tool.
Here, the jQueryMobile table view is combined with a button to launch an interactive webview to GoogleMaps that plots the current device location and the location of the customer.
Here, a stock check is displayed in a table view, with a numeric indicator of the quantity, and a bar chart indicating quantity vs. target.
All of this customization is basic web development in HTML5 and JavaScript, and requires no knowledge of xCode, Objective-C, Android development, etc. The same app runs across all supported platforms, and can be re-skinned to match whichever OS it's running on.
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