Intro
Unlike jQuery Mobile Sencha Touch
(just like App Framework
) is made specifically to work on mobile platforms and it is highly optimized. Where jQuery Mobile is made to work equally on desktop and mobile devices and it is not optimized like Sencha Touch
. This is not bad for jQuery Mobile but it also means jQuery Mobile is not best solution form mobile hybrid applications.
Good side of Sencha Touch
- It is several times faster then jQuery Mobile, you can find several benchamark articles if you google a bit. From my experience Sencha Touch mobile applications works much much smoother then jQuery Mobile ones. Again this is not an attack on jQuery Mobile, Sencha is highly optimized not to mention build to run only on web kit browsers.
- Much better application packaging system then Phonegap which is usually used with jQuery Mobile
- Did I say it is FAAAAAAST, a little bit slower then App Framework but still extremely fast.
- Excellent documentation with huge number of tutorials and video examples.
vs. the bad
- Unlike jQuery Mobile don't expect Sencha Touch to work on a desktop browsers. First it is optimized to work on a smaller devices and it will work only on web kit browsers which makes it unusable for Firefox, IE8+ ....
- It uses complex and alien syntax, specially to someone coming from jQuery Mobile or jQuery like syntax.
- Development application is a paid app so you need to expect initial expenses.
- Don't expect native app feeling, mobile apps made with HTML5 will never have 100% native feel.
- Unlike Sencha official documentation jQuery Mobile is still much more represented on the internet
Final advise
If Sencha Touch is not something you are willing to spend time on and jQuery Mobile is too sluggish for you, consider using PhoneJS or Kendo UI. Unlike Sencha Touch, they are built on jQuery, but unlike jQuery they are fast as Sencha Touch.