PhoneGap Build Simplifies Mobile App Development Across Multiple OSes

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For many enterprises today, creating custom apps for mobile devices makes sense for business. If you have dedicated development staff, chances are they have dabbled in mobile programming for one operating system or another. But when you need to develop an app that can operate on more than one mobile platform, you may run into issues. That’s where PhoneGap Build can be an app saver.

PhoneGap is an open-source development framework that is standards-based. Deploy PhoneGap to a mobile device, and you will gain access to its local file system, contacts, camera and even media. It works on multiple platforms and doesn’t require the use of code to activate.

To learn more about PhoneGap and using PhoneGap Build, the book “PhoneGap Build: Developing Cross Platform Mobile Applications in the Cloud,” provides extensive direction. Both intermediate and advanced developers can learn more about mobile platforms, supported browsers and the programming languages and development platforms used to create apps for mobile devices.

In our IT Downloads section, you can check out an excerpt from the book, Chapter 4: Using PhoneGap Build. This chapter covers topics such as:

• Beginning with PhoneGap Build
• Defining the structure of the application to upload
• Creating builds for different mobile platforms
• Loading private keys
• Installing the builds on the emulator
• Downloading apps directly to the device
• Debugging the apps

According to the introduction, PhoneGap Build is the cloud building service that simplifies the development of PhoneGap apps in the cloud:

What we are supposed to do is just create the Web content and upload it to the Build service. Thereafter, it is the task of PhoneGap Build to develop the code that supports different mobile platforms, including Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and webOS. It also means that we, as developers, just need to develop a single application (in any platform of our choice), and when that application is loaded to the Build service, PhoneGap Build will generate applications for the other platforms for us.

The chapter then goes on to explain how to create an account on the PhoneGap Build website and the differences between the types of apps. The author details what an app might consist of, samples of code for a config.xml file, and instructions on creating builds for the different mobile OSes.

Current app developers and beginning developers alike will benefit from reading this chapter. It will provide the information necessary to get you started with building an app for a variety of mobile platforms without too much complexity.