Proponents of the jQuery Mobile web framework and the jQuery UI widgets and themes collection are looking for new blood to revive these stalled projects, which are to be combined into a single effort.
The past few years have been “difficult” for both projects, said Alex Schmitz, who has become the new project lead. Both projects have suffered from a lack of resources and funding as well a loss of contributors. “These combined factors have nearly stopped development on both projects,” he said.
To best use available resources, the two project teams will be combined, although separate repositories will exist for the mobile and UI projects. Participants are hoping for a continued reduction in the amount of duplicated code and widgets. JQuery Mobile would eventually be made into a more of an application framework with all widgets living in jQuery UI. People interested in participating in these projects can join a new public Slack channel set up for that purpose.
Both projects were built atop the popular jQuery JavaScript library; all three are under the jurisdiction of the JS Foundation, the successor to the jQuery Foundation. JQuery Mobile has featured an HTML5 UI for mobile device platforms and is positioned as touch-optimized; jQuery UI is a curated set of UI interactions, effects, themes and widgets.