Monaca has released the latest version of its Onsen UI HTML5 framework for building mobile sites, adding a whole host of new features.

“Onsen UI 1.1 is a major new release of our popular custom elements-based HTML5 UI framework,” a company blog post said. “Want to build mobile UIs? It’s even easier than before!”

The new version adds a new interface for Web developers that doesn’t require the use of AngularJS the way previous versions did. AngularJS is a Web development framework developed by Google (News – Alert) to make Web development easier.

While developers already accustomed to AngularJS can continue to develop pages the way they’ve been doing, new users will have a front-end to AngularJS and can design attractive mobile pages using AngularJS code underneath.

Monaca hopes that jQuery users will find Onsen UI a fast alternative to jQuery Mobile.

Speaking of jQuery, Onsen UI has also added support for the popular JavaScript library that allows developers to add complex effects and functionality to their Web pages without having to code in JavaScript from scratch.

The new version also has a number of user interface improvements to make developing mobile sites even easier.

One new feature is the “CSS (News – Alert) Roller”, which lets developers easily create custom CSS themes and plug them into their sites.

Onsen UI also adds a smoother transitions, a new navigator, new functions and attributes that make mobile web apps easier to develop.

While there are a lot of obvious advantages to building web apps, it can be tedious to do so from scratch. Tools like Onsen UI make it possible for developers to create apps that can work on a variety of devices from PCs to smartphones by automating the user interface code, which is one of the most difficult parts of an app to create. Onsen UI does the same thing that Apple and Microsoft (News – Alert) have done for desktop apps by providing toolkits that developers can use to build apps instead of doing everything by hand.