PhoneGap Essentials: Building Cross-platform Mobile Apps (Older Version 2012) - Softcover

John M. Wargo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0321814290 ISBN 13: 9780321814296

Publisher: AddisonWesley Professional, 2012

Synopsis

PhoneGap is Adobe’s distribution of the free and open source framework (originally developed by Nitobi) that is now also available from the Apache Foundation as Apache Cordova™. Using PhoneGap, developers can build native mobile apps using standard HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS, and then deploy those apps to every leading mobile platform with little or no recoding. Up to now, though, PhoneGap was lacking complete, practical documentation. PhoneGap Essentials fills that void: It’s the first concise, yet complete, tutorial for succeeding with PhoneGap in real-world development.

 

Experienced mobile developer John M. Wargo thoroughly introduces the PhoneGap platform, explaining what it is, what it does, and how it works. He then guides you through configuring PhoneGap environments—creating complete mobile apps—and building them for the Google Android™, Samsung bada, BlackBerry® devices, Apple® iOS, Symbian™ OS, and Windows® Phone. Through realistic examples, you’ll master key PhoneGap APIs for everything from GPS to the file system, contacts to camera, device to events, and more. Wargo also demonstrates how to take full advantage of PhoneGap Build, PhoneGap’s cloud-based packaging utility.

 

Coverage includes

• The anatomy of a PhoneGap application (what makes an application a PhoneGap application)
• Understanding the impact of cross-platform development issues
• Exploring the entire PhoneGap development process, including testing and debugging
• Expanding PhoneGap’s capabilities with third-party development tools and plug-ins
• Building cross-platform apps that use the device camera, compass, accelerometer, and other hardware
• Reading from and writing to the contacts database and the device file system
• Installing tools needed to develop PhoneGap apps for Android, bada, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone
• Reacting to events and notifying users
• Using the Media API to record and play media files
• Building for multiple platforms simultaneously using PhoneGap Build 

About the Website

Downloadable code projects, additional information, and errata are available at phonegapessentials.com.

About this title

From the Author

This book was publishedin 2012 and covers PhoneGap 2; it was written right about the time that thePhoneGap project was donated to the Apache Foundation and renamed to ApacheCordova. PhoneGap refers to Adobe's distribution of Apache Cordova, but formost everything Cordova and PhoneGap are the same.
 
Cordova/PhoneGap changeddramatically with the release of Apache Cordova 3; the Cordova development teamsimplified the way projects are created and essentially invalidated the contentin PhoneGap Essentials.
 
Instead of updating thisbook when newer versions of Cordova were released, I instead split the bookinto two parts and updated each part separately as a new publication. The firsthalf of this book, the part that covers setting up a Cordova developmentenvironment and everything related to Cordova development, has been updated forApache Cordova 4 and published as Apache Cordova 4 Programming. The second halfof PhoneGap Essentials, the part that covers all of the Cordova APIs in detail hasbeen updated to cover recent updates to the APIs and published as ApacheCordova API Cookbook.

About the Author

John M. Wargo has more than twenty years of experience designing and developing enterprise applications with a focus on collaboration and process automation. John has spent the last five years focusing on mobile development having worked for Research In Motion and authored BlackBerry Development Fundamentals (Addison-Wesley, 2010; www.bbdevfundamentals.com) and a series of articles on mobile development for The View (www.eview.com). He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, delivering sessions on mobile development and analysis of mobile industry trends. In his current role, he is a practice manager in AT&T’s Advanced Mobile Applications Practice, specializing in mobile application platforms and frameworks, and helping customers realize their mobile initiatives.

Edition details

• Publisher: AddisonWesley Professional
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0321814290
• ISBN 13: 9780321814296
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384