subject: Phonegap Development For Quickly Building Cross-platform Mobile Apps [print this page] PhoneGap is one of the most widely used Open Source frameworks for building cross-platform mobile apps. Instead of using native language, PhoneGap allows developers to use HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 for creating unique and vibrant apps. This helps mobile app developers to leverage their current skills on the common platform, rather than a device specific programming language. This is perfect for those developers who want to create single codebase to target multiple devices.
The applications that are built with PhoneGap are more advanced compared to normal HTML5 mobile websites. Using various APIs (application programming interface), PhoneGap applications can easily link to the smartphones hardware such as Camera, Compass, or Accelerometer. Similar to native apps, cross-platform PhoneGap applications can be built and developed. However, the best part of PhoneGap development is that the apps have gained tremendous recognition in the Apple App Store as well as Google Play Store and Windows Store. Hence, one can find the specific app for any mobile platform.
PhoneGap development can cater for app solutions for a wide range of mobile platforms, which includes iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, as well as Symbian, HP WebOS and Bada. Besides, PhoneGap development can add a number of features to the cross-platform mobile app.
PhoneGap SDK (Software Development Kit) offers a wide range of application interfaces to the developer to deal with the specific mobile feature. Some of the typical mobile hardware APIs supported by PhoneGap are as follows:
-Accelerometer API
-Compass sensor API
-Geolocation API
-Media API
-Storage API
-Globalization API
-Connection API
-And several others.
All the APIs offered by PhoneGap are platform specific; hence, in order to create a variety of apps, specific platform SDK needs to be installed. The SDK usually provides developers libraries and tools that are necessary to develop, test, and debug app for specific mobile platform.
To build Windows 8 apps, developers need to have Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 professional installed. In addition, PhoneGap also requires installation of Apache Cordova, which is a collection of mobile APIs that help access native hardware functions. Similarly, to build iPhone apps, developers need to have a Mac machine along with Mac OS X, Xcode 4.5+, and Apache Cordova installed.
PhoneGap development is the app solution that can suffice the needs of different mobile platforms. PhoneGap developer can create multiple app solutions for business, games, entertainment, and social media. For quickly building cross-platform mobile apps, PhoneGap has become the best Open Source framework.
