Table of Contents
This chapter describes how to write mobile applications using the Vaadin TouchKit.
Web browsing is becoming ever increasingly mobile and web applications need to satisfy users with both desktop computers and mobile devices, such as phones and tablets. While the mobile browsers can show the pages just like in regular browsers, the screen size, finger accuracy, and mobile browser features need to be considered to make the experience more pleasant. Vaadin TouchKit gives the power of Vaadin for creating mobile user interfaces that complement the regular web user interfaces of your applications. Just like the purpose of the Vaadin Framework is to make desktop-like web applications, the purpose of TouchKit is to allow creation of web applications that give the look and feel akin to native mobile applications.
In this chapter, we first look into the special considerations of mobile browsing. Then, we look how to create a project that uses TouchKit. TouchKit offers a number of specialized mobile components, which are described in a dedicated section. We treat phone and tablet applications separately, and discuss testing briefly. Finally, we discuss the limitations of TouchKit briefly. In the chapter, we use a Mobile Mail application as an example for creating a web application that looks very much like a native mobile application.
Vaadin TouchKit is a commercial product licensed under a dual-licensing scheme. The AGPL license allows open-source development, while the CVAL license needs to be purchased for closed-source use, including web deployments and internal use. Commercial licenses can be purchased from the Vaadin Directory, where you can also find the license details and download Vaadin TouchKit.