jQuery Mobile and Kendo UI are the popular JavaScript frameworks that form the base and building blocks for all the modern mobile web apps under development. Both of these frameworks are constructed on top of jQuery which is among the top notch JavaScript libraries in use.
Comparing Kendo UI and jQuery Mobile is something similar to comparing the two sides of the same coin. As well know that jQuery Mobile does not actually need much of an introduction for the reason that it is among one of the most commonly used HTML5 Frameworks.
Kendo UI is also on the similar pace with similar motive. Just similar to jQuery Mobile even Kendo UI is based on the concept of jQuery Application Frameworks. Nevertheless one great difference between the two is that Kendo UI is a commercial product as a whole whereas jQuery Mobile is an open source. This does not imply that you should switch over to jQuery Mobile as Kendo UI is not an open source because open source does not mean that jQuery Mobile is better than Kendo UI and the vice versa.
Here in this post on WDJ we will try to have a better understanding on the differences between Kendo UI and jQuery Mobile though both are into the same field of business.
Differentiating in terms of Platform Support and Marketing Strategy
jQuery Mobile and Kendo UI are a little different in this aspect. You can see that Kendo UI promotes itself as: “Comprehensive HTML5/JavaScript framework for modern web and mobile app development. Telerik’s Kendo UI is everything professional developers need to build HTML5 sites and mobile apps. Today, productivity of an average HTML/jQuery developer is hampered by assembling a Frankenstein framework of disparate JavaScript libraries and plug-ins. Kendo UI has it all: rich jQuery-based widgets, a simple and consistent programming interface, a rock-solid Data Source, validation, internationalization, a MVVM framework, themes, templates and the list goes on ……”
whereas jQuery Mobile promotes itself as: “jQuery Mobile: Touch-Optimized Web Framework for Smartphones & Tablets. A unified, HTML5-based user interface system for all popular mobile device platforms, built on the rock-solid jQuery and jQuery UI foundation. Its lightweight code is built with progressive enhancement, and has a flexible, easily themeable design …..”
From the above it is clear that the developers of jQuery Mobile are promoting this product as a completely novel product in line to other products in the market. In the definition of jQuery Mobile the mobile nature is defined as early as second sentence and this is of importance for the reason that Kendo UI is just similar but to an extent different beast. Kendo UI as a framework renders more of mobile usage when compared to jQuery Mobile. To sum it up it has been said that Kendo UI is mix of jQuery User Interface with jQuery Mobile along with a tangy glimpse of server side support.
Kendo UI
- This framework is similar to jQuery Mobile with extensive support for the entire top notch HTML Desktop Web Browsers along with all the popular mobile platforms. Despite the fact that this can be a little less than jQuery Mobile however it renders support for almost all the popular platforms with great down to earth marketing strategy.
jQuery Mobile
- This framework does not promote itself as the sole HTML5 Framework that any web developer will need.
- Huge Support for all the famous desktop web browsers and mobile platforms which at times ends up creating more problems.
- Supported by large number of mobile platforms and desktop browsers.
Winner: There is a Tie between the two on this aspect.
Differentiating in terms of User Interface and Visual Impression
The look and feel is an important aspect that needs to be discussed and again both the frameworks are quite close and similar in this aspect. In case you need to have platform consistency with your application then jQuery Mobile is suggested as it makes use of the user interface irrespective of the platform. The UI has a wide range of widgets that are highly responsive and take part in complete rotations with extensive third party support.
If you consider the two frameworks from the look perspective in that case Kendo UI has a lot to offer when compared to jQuery Mobile as there are several themes to suit every kind of mimic in Kendo UI whereas jQuery Mobile has one single theme for all the swatches. In case of Kendo UI the layout design is similar to that of jQuery Mobile and you can make out the differences if and only if you have a closer look at both. If you want to transition from jQuery Mobile to Kendo UI or vice versa it is very fast as you need not worry about it as you can easily create complex user interface designs in no time.
Kendo UI
- It has extensive widget support just like jQuery Mobile.
- The iOS look and feel gives you a complete native experience.
- It has wide range of themes that is good in case you need distinct look and feel on different platforms.
- This has a great UI performance on all the mobile devices and you will get a native feel of all the transitions. It is sad to say but the performance will slowly degrade with increase in the complexity of the layout.
jQuery Mobile
- This framework has the same user interface irrespective of the platform you are working with.
- The UI looks more similar to iOS
- There are so many inbuilt extraordinary widgets along with a huge number of third party widgets.
- jQuery Mobile has comparatively better page responsiveness in terms of different resolutions and CSS when compared to Kendo UI.
- You can easily make modification to the UI just as in case of Kendo UI.
- If you compare it with Kendo UI in terms of performance at times the application can completely turn out to be useless as jQuery suffers to a great extent on mobile devices.
Winner: In this aspect Kendo UI is the winner because of its mobile performance.
Differentiating in terms of Ease of Use and Availability
Just the way we differentiated the first point in this aspect also it is going to be a very close situation as both Kendo UI and jQuery Mobile are markup driven frameworks and their dependency on jQuery makes these frameworks easy to use and play around with. It is sad to say but jQuery Mobile does not render Model View Controller Architecture support whereas Kendo UI is built on the MVC architecture.
Kendo UI
- Though the JavaScript syntax is comparatively different from that of jQuery this framework is easy to use.
- You can as well modify the widgets so as to change the look and feel of the app with its wide range of themes available.
- MVC Support
jQuery Mobile
- The JavaScript syntax is similar to that of the standard jQuery making it seamlessly easy to use.
- Though there is no support for MVC you can somehow fix it with the help of Knockout.js or Backbone.js
- Fantastic Theme Roller Support.
- You do not require any IDE for building Mobile Web Applications.
Winner: Kendo UI is the winner here because of its MVVM support.