Is the jQuery Mobile App development/support being phased out ?

[Bob Fludder]

Hi. Just a question. I'm getting the feeling that all future development etc at Appery is going to be based around Angular JS and Bootstrap and in fact the jQuery part of the platform is considered "legacy". Is this correct ? Does this mean I should now learn how to code using the Angular App instead ? Will there be a means of "migrating" existing projects ? or am I way off line ?

[Illya Stepanov]

Hi Bob -

We are still support jQuery Mobile and we are not dropping it now.

The other case is AngularJS with modular architecture it opens wider opportunities for developers, also it much faster in terms of performance and supports all new JavaScript technologies.

So it would be always a good idea to start learning AngularJS now.

Migration of jQuery Mobile projects into AngularJS is impossible since this are totally different frameworks and structure of projects.

[Bob Fludder]

Thanks Illya. Thats basically what I thought. Means the apps I've written over the last 3 years need to be re-written sometime in the future. Now I guess I have to learn AngularJS.

[RobertJay]

I hope you give us at least six months advance notice when you drop support for jQuery Mobile so that developers not wanting/able to rewrite their apps have time to move them elsewhere.

[Bob Fludder]

I agree but I think you'll find that they won't drop support completely - just slow down on new features and may take longer for replies. Maybe in a few years though... Right now they have some market penetration so they probably want to keep us but look at other areas (such as AngularJS etc) and focus on that for a while. Meanwhile we're sort of stuck with what we have

[RobertJay]

I'll tell you what bothers me. I may have just missed it, but before Illya's response to your pointed question I don't recall any concerted heads-up from Appery that the shovel for jQuery Mobile's grave has been was unpacked and dusted off. And at the same time (and again, I may have just missed it) the last word I recall from Appery was that Angular JS and Bootstrap were still not formally considered ready for critical production use. It makes it kind of challenging to serve your own clients.

[Bob Fludder]

Again I agree. Just spent the best part of 2 no nearly 3 years developing an app for a client and now I need to re-think. I did see another off the cuff comment somewhere that the jQuery side was going to be made legacy. That, quite a few new updates for AngularJS/Bootstrap, and the changes to the pricing plans prompted me to ask the question. Timeframe is an issue - like when will this happen (note when not if) and I hope we'll get sufficient notice to do something. The other choice was that if they do something then a way of migrating the code would have helped - but that seems out of the question. Not sure exactly where to look next.