Thomas Myer - Beginning PhoneGap

Contents

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Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-15665-0

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ISBN: 978-1-118-23932-2 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-25399-1 (ebk)

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To my wife, Hope, for loving me anyway.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THOMAS MYER works and lives in Austin, Texas. Hes been a PHP web developer for about ten years, and a mobile apps developer for the past three. Until recently, he was the Top Dog of Triple Dog Dare Media, but now works for Deal Management, LLC, out of Minnesota, where he builds web and mobile apps. You can follow him at @myerman on Twitter.

ABOUT THE TECHNICAL EDITORS

BRIAN LEROUX is the lead software architect at Nitobi Inc. where he focuses on delivering web and mobile apps and helping developers all over the world write their apps. He is a contributor to the popular PhoneGap Open Source framework, and is the creator of XUI and Lawnchair.

DANNY LOWE was born in Huntington Beach, and raised in Southern California, but now calls Austin, Texas, his home. He is a computer programming superhero who has been skillfully hiding his secret identity since 1996. When he is not writing code and saving the careers of project managers by leaping tall deadlines in a single bound, Lowe is playing music, writing fiction and poetry, or hanging out with his wife, Stephanie, and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @DannyInAustin .

CREDITS

ACQUISITIONS EDITOR

Mary James

PROJECT EDITOR

Kevin Shafer

TECHNICAL EDITORS

Brian LeRoux

Danny Lowe

SENIOR PRODUCTION EDITOR

Debra Banninger

COPY EDITOR

Kim Cofer

EDITORIAL MANAGER

Mary Beth Wakefield

FREELANCER EDITORIAL MANAGER

Rosemarie Graham

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

David Mayhew

MARKETING MANAGER

Ashley Zurcher

BUSINESS MANAGER

Amy Knies

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Tim Tate

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE GROUP PUBLISHER

Richard Swadley

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER

Neil Edde

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Jim Minatel

PROJECT COORDINATOR, COVER

Katie Crocker

PROOFREADER

Nancy Carrasco

INDEXER

Robert Swanson

COVER DESIGNER

Ryan Sneed

COVER IMAGE

tc397 / iStockPhoto

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MANY THANKS TO Mary James of Wiley, who called out of the blue one day and wondered if I would like to work on a PhoneGap book. The same thanks go to Kevin Shafer and the fine editorial team at Wiley for taking my garbled gobblydegook and making it into an actual book.

This book would not be complete without my technical reviewers: Brian Leroux, who took a lot of time out of his busy schedule to give me his thoughts on the manuscript; and Danny Lowe, who proved invaluable as he tested every line of code in the examples. I know I was a pain in the rear to work with, so thanks for putting up with me.

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD OF MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT is changing rapidly, and frameworks like PhoneGap represent an important step in broadening that world to a very large audience of experienced web developers. With PhoneGap, you can now transfer some (if not most) of your knowledge and skills from the web world to the mobile app world.

This book introduces you to PhoneGap concepts, and helps you transition to where youre building functional apps all without having to learn Objective-C or another similar language for native app development.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

If youre reading this book, you probably fit one of the following descriptions:

• Youre a web developer with intermediate knowledge of cascading style sheets (CSS), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and JavaScript.
• Youve been building working web apps for a while now (several years, more likely), and are thus conversant with web databases like MySQL, or at least have been involved in projects that work with MySQL.
• Youve been asked (either at your job or by a client) to build a mobile app that works on more than one platform (Android and iOS, for example), and you must get something done fast.