App-UI - a New HTML5 Application Framework

I’d like to take a moment and introduce app-UI, a new open source application framework that I’ve been working on.

app-UI is a collection of reusable “application container” user interface components that may be helpful to web and mobile developers for creating interactive applications using HTML and JavaScript, especially those targeting mobile devices. app-UI is a continual work in progress – it was born out of the necessity to have rich & native-feeling interfaces in HTML/JS experiences, and it works great with PhoneGap applications (http://www.phonegap.com). app-UI can easily be styled/customized using CSS.

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that things will change as the project is improved and matured – this is a beta/early prototype.

All of app-UI was created using HTML, CSS, & JavaScript. All animations are rendered using CSS3 translate3d, so that they are hardware accelerated (where supported). app-UI works well on iOS, Android and BlackBerry browsers (others not tested), and works well on the latest releases of most desktop browsers (I know it does not work on old versions of IE).

Why?

You might be wondering “why create this?” when there are other open source alternatives like jQuery Mobile. The primary motivation for creating app-UI was to have reusable application containers that are highly performant, and do not force any prescriptive development paradigms. With respect to animations/transitions, app-UI outperforms the alternatives, particularly on mobile devices.

app-UI can be used with many different existing frameworks – app-UI only requires jQuery as a solution accelerator framework. It will work with existing UI widget frameworks (jQuery UI, Twitter Bootstrap, etc…), and will work with existing templating frameworks (Moustache, Knockout, Handlebars, etc…).

Application Containers

app-UI currently has three application containers, and at this time it is not intended to be a complete UI widget framework.

Please see the “samples” directory for usage scenarios – there is no documentation yet.

ViewNavigator

The ViewNavigator component allows you to create mobile experiences with an easily recognizable mobile UI paradigm. You use this to push & pop views from the stack.

Samples:

• Simple ViewNavigator
• Simple ViewNavigator w/ Browser History Integration

SplitViewNavigator

The SplitViewNavigator component allows you to create tablet experiences with an easily recognizable mobile UI paradigm. The SplitViewNavigator allows you to have side-by-side content in the landscape orientation, and the sidebar is hidden in portrait orientation.

Samples:

•  
  • Simple SplitViewNavigator

SlidingView

The SlidingView allows content to slide to the side using a horizontal swipe gesture, revealing a navigation container “underneath”. This is very similar to the behavior in Facebook’s iPad application.

Samples:

Just swipe horizontally with a finger or the mouse…

• Basic SlidingView
• Layered ViewNavigators in SlidingView

Bugs & Features

No software is ever bug-free. If you encounter an issue, have feedback, or have feature requests, please log them at: https://github.com/triceam/app-UI/issues

-OR-

Fork it, fix it, and send me a pull request.

Please do not just complain.

Real World Usage

You can see this framework in the following real-world apps:

• US Census Browser:
  • http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/us-census-browser/id483201717?mt=8
  • http://tricedesigns.com/census

If you have built your own app using this framework, please let me know! (@andytrice on twitter)

Download

Get started with app-UI today! Just browse to http://triceam.github.com/app-UI/, read the details, download a copy, and start building your own apps!

If you’re building something cool with it, then let me know! I’d love to hear about it.