Building a touch version of a website (with jQTouch)

A touch site or touch version actually refers to web apps. Web apps are web pages designed to be best viewed on an iPhone and are programmed in HTML and JavaScript. The HTML and JavaScript have a few extensions referred to as Safari HTML and Safari JavaScript for getting device-related effects or support. Unlike normal web pages, web apps will follow iPhone's consistent user interface and touch-friendly layout, such as menu bars, sliding select options, and so on. Sometimes, they're also referred to as "web clips". The following image shows touch.facebook.com, the touch version of Facebook, viewed on an iPhone.

To create a web app UI/style quickly, there are some frameworks and toolkits available, such as, IUI, jQTouch, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and so on. jQTouch and jQuery Mobile are jQuery-based libraries. We'll see how to build a web app/touch version using jQTouch.

Getting ready

We'll require Safari web browser to test the web apps...