PhoneGap Essentials: Building Cross-Platform Mobile Apps, Rough Cuts

Description

This is the Rough Cut version of the printed book.

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 

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

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Foreword by Bryce A. Curtis xiii

A Little PhoneGap History 4

Why Use PhoneGap? 5

How PhoneGap Works 6

Designing for the Container 11

Writing PhoneGap Applications 13

Building PhoneGap Applications 13

PhoneGap Limitations 17

PhoneGap Plug-Ins 18

Getting Support for PhoneGap 19

PhoneGap Resources 19

Hybrid Application Frameworks 19

Hello, World! 23

PhoneGap Initialization 25

Leveraging PhoneGap APIs 28

Enhancing the User Interface of a PhoneGap Application 30

Testing and Debugging PhoneGap Applications 35

Dealing with Cross-Platform Development Issues 49

Installing the Android SDK 58

Eclipse Development Environment Configuration 64

Creating an Android PhoneGap Project 66

Testing Android PhoneGap Applications 77

Downloading and Installing the Correct PhoneGap bada Files 80

Creating a bada PhoneGap Project 82

Creating a bada Application Profile 86

Testing bada PhoneGap Applications 95

Installing the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK 98

Creating a BlackBerry PhoneGap Project 99

Building BlackBerry PhoneGap Applications 103

Testing BlackBerry PhoneGap Applications 109

Registering as an Apple Developer 113

Installing Xcode 114

Creating an iOS PhoneGap Project 116

Testing iOS PhoneGap Applications 122

Installing the Nokia Web Tools 125

Installing the Make Utility 126

Creating a Symbian PhoneGap Project 128

Configuring Application Settings 129

Modifying HelloWorld3 for Symbian 130

Packaging Symbian PhoneGap Projects 131

Testing Symbian PhoneGap Applications 132

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