PhoneGap

In software development, PhoneGap is a mobile development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011.^[3][4] It enables software programmers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, instead of relying on platform-specific APIs like those in iOS, Windows Phone, or Android.^[5] It enables wrapping up of HTML, CSS and Javascript code depending upon the platform of the device. It extends the features of HTML and Javascript to work with the device. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native mobile application (because all layout rendering is done via web views instead of the platform's native UI framework) nor purely web-based (because they are not just web apps, but are packaged as apps for distribution and have access to native device APIs). Mixing native and hybrid code snippets has been possible since version 1.9.

The software underlying PhoneGap is Apache Cordova.^[6] The software was previously called just "PhoneGap", then "Apache Callback".^[7][8] As open-source software, Apache Cordova allows non-Adobe wrappers around it, such as Intel XDK or Appery.io.

History

First developed at an iPhoneDevCamp event in San Francisco,^[9] PhoneGap went on to win the People's Choice Award at O'Reilly Media's 2009 Web 2.0 Conference^[10] and the framework has been used to develop many apps.^[11] Apple Inc. has confirmed that the framework has its approval, even with the new 4.0 developer license agreement changes.^[12] The PhoneGap framework is used by several mobile application platforms such as Asial's Monaca,^[13] ViziApps,^[14] Worklight,^[15][16] Convertigo,^[17][18] and appMobi^[19] as the backbone of their mobile client development engine. Adobe officially announced the acquisition of Nitobi Software (the original developer) on October 4, 2011.^[20] Coincident with that, the PhoneGap code was contributed to the Apache Software Foundation to start a new project called Apache Cordova. The project's original name, Apache Callback, was viewed as too generic.^[21] Then it also appears in Adobe Systems as Adobe PhoneGap and also as Adobe Phonegap Build.^[22]

Early versions of PhoneGap required a person making iOS apps to have an Apple computer, and a person making Windows Mobile apps to have a computer running Windows. After September 2012, Adobe's PhoneGap Build service allows programmers to upload HTML, CSS and JavaScript source code to a "cloud compiler" that generates apps for every supported platform.^[23]

Design and rationale

The core of PhoneGap applications use HTML5 and CSS3 for their rendering, and JavaScript for their logic. Although HTML5 now provides access to underlying hardware such as the accelerometer, camera and GPS, browser support for HTML5-based device access is not consistent across mobile browsers, particularly older versions of Android. To overcome these limitations, the PhoneGap framework embeds HTML5 code inside a native WebView on the device, using a foreign function interface to access the native resources of the device.^[24]

PhoneGap is also able to be extended with native plug-ins that allow for developers to add functionality that can be called from JavaScript, allowing for direct communication between the native layer and the HTML5 page. PhoneGap includes basic plugins that allow access to the device's accelerometer, camera, microphone, compass, file system, and more.

However, the use of web-based technologies leads many PhoneGap applications to run slower than native applications with similar functionality.^[25] Adobe Systems warns that applications built using PhoneGap may be rejected by Apple for being too slow or not feeling "native" enough (having appearance and functionality consistent with what users have come to expect on the platform).^[26][27]

Supported platforms

PhoneGap currently supports development for the operating systems Apple iOS, BlackBerry, Google Android,^[28] LG webOS, Microsoft Windows Phone (7 and 8), Nokia Symbian OS, Tizen (SDK 2.x), Bada, Firefox OS,^[29] and Ubuntu Touch. The table below is a list of supported features for each operating system.^[30][31][32]

See also

• List of rich Internet application frameworks
• Multiple phone web based application framework
• RhoMobile Suite

References

Bibliography

External links

The Wikibook Android has a page on the topic of: PhoneGap

• Official website
• Apache Cordova
• PhoneGap Spain is the Spanish-Speaking Community / AUG (Spanish)
• Phonegap Infographic

Apache Software Foundation Top level projects Abdera Accumulo ActiveMQ Ant Aries Apache HTTP Server APR Avro Axis Axis2 Bloodhound Buildr Camel Cassandra Cayenne Chemistry Click CloudStack Cocoon Continuum Cordova CouchDB cTAKES CXF Deltacloud Derby Directory Empire-db Felix Flex Forrest Geronimo Gora Gump Hadoop Hama HBase Hive Isis Jackrabbit James JMeter Kafka Lenya Mahout Marmotta Maven MINA mod_perl MyFaces ODE OFBiz OpenEJB OpenJPA OpenNLP OpenOffice PDFBox Phoenix POI Pivot Qpid River Roller Samza ServiceMix Shindig Shiro Sling Spark Stanbol Storm SpamAssassin Struts Subversion Sqoop Tapestry Tcl Thrift Tiles Tomcat Trafficserver Turbine Tuscany UIMA Velocity Wave Wicket Wink Xalan Xerces XMLBeans Commons Projects BCEL BSF Daemon Jelly Lucene Projects Lucene Java Lucene.Net Nutch Solr Hadoop Projects HDFS HBase Hive Pig Spark ZooKeeper Other projects Chainsaw Batik FOP Log4j XAP Log4Net Ivy Incubator Projects XAP Apache Attic AxKit Beehive Bluesky Cactus Jakarta Excalibur Harmony HiveMind Slide Shale stdcxx iBATIS Licenses standards Apache License Category Commons