PhoneGap: Beginner’s Guide

With the increasingly fragmented mobile application landscape, it’s important to find strategies that allow for rapid development on many different platforms. Using PhoneGap, you will be able to use a single codebase that targets iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and more, just using web development skills.

PhoneGap  Beginner’s Guide will show you how to use the PhoneGap mobile development framework to target multiple mobile platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and more with a single application. With PhoneGap, you can use existing web development skills, instead of learning a new environment for every platform on the market.

PhoneGap Beginner’s Guide will escalate you from being a novice at mobile development to writing complex applications that target multiple platforms, through learning the APIs and development process of the PhoneGap framework.

You will learn how to manage a code base that targets multiple mobile platforms; how to use new HTML5 and CSS3 APIs to create rich, responsive user interfaces; and how to use the PhoneGap APIs to integrate with native functionality such as device sensors, contacts, and cameras.

After reading PhoneGap Beginner’s Guide, you will have the skills and the confidence to target all of the major mobile platforms with rich and responsive applications.

This is a beginner’s introduction to practical use of the PhoneGap mobile application framework.

What you will learn from this book :

• Rich interactions using HTML5 and CSS3 APIs
• Mobile JavaScript expertise: write code that travels anywhere
• Working offline: use web development skills with native code to create installable web-apps that sync with remote servers
• Enhancing application experiences with real-time sensor data
• Integrating with cameras and images to enrich users’ experiences
• Access device contacts and data for fully native interactions
• Detecting devices precisely and skillfully to progressively enhance your user interface within a single application
• Pluging in to PhoneGap: adding functionality to the framework with custom native code

Approach
This is a step-by-step guide written in an informal, friendly style, for beginners to learn building cross-platform mobile applications with PhoneGap. You will find plenty of fully explained code and ample screenshots in the book to ease and speed up your understanding.

Who this book is written for
This book is for developers, ideally with web development experience, who are interested in developing for the emerging mobile market, but do not want to learn a new SDK for every phone on the shelf. Readers should be comfortable with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and interested in learning the new advances in those technologies that allow for rich, native-style experiences.

Book Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (September 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849515360
• ISBN-13: 978-1849515368