Instant PhoneGap

Begin your journey of building amazing mobile applications using PhoneGap with the geolocation API

Overview

• Learn something new in an Instant! A short, fast, focused guide delivering immediate results
• Build your first app using the geolocation API, reading xml file and phonegap
• Full code provided along with illustrations, images, and Cascading style sheets
• Develop an application in PhoneGap and submit it to app stores for different platforms

In Detail

PhoneGap is a mobile development framework. Building applications for each device-iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and more-requires different frameworks and languages. PhoneGap solves this by using standards-based web technologies to bridge web applications and mobile devices. Since PhoneGap apps are standards-compliant, they're future-proofed to work with browsers as they evolve.

PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platform's native development environment. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native nor purely web-based. The book will start with the basics of PhoneGap and will enable you to create an application in PhoneGap and submit it to different app stores such as Android and iOS.

PhoneGap is a web-based mobile development framework, based on the open source Cordova project. You will learn the basics of PhoneGap, get started with building your first app, and gradually work on complex tasks like building and improving the CSS defining the app style, font, colors, and views using jQuery themes. You will learn to edit the index.html file to include the correct JavaScript. You will use the PhoneGap geolocation API to locate restaurants on a map and monitor your current position. Finally, you will review your code, get the certificates from the OS you want to deploy your app, and build it using PhoneGap Build.

What you will learn from this book

• Set up your PhoneGap development environment
• Use the geolocation API programming interface
• Read an XML file with your app information
• Build a simple but powerful CSS file
• Develop mobile apps using HTML5, JS, and CSS
• Use the Google Maps Application programming interface
• Read an XML file using JavaScript
• Create a hybrid app using PhoneGap

Approach

Get to grips with a new technology, understand what it is and what it can do for you, and then get to work with the most important features and tasks. This is a guide that starts with the basics of a PhoneGap mobile application along with top features to enable you to build your own PhoneGap mobile application.

Who this book is written for

This book is ideal for those who want to develop mobile apps but do not want to learn a new SDK for every phone on the shelf. You should have basic knowledge of HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS or any programming language.