Jamie Munro - 20 Recipes for Programming PhoneGap: Cross-Platform Mobile Development for Android and iPhone

Copyright 2012 Jamie Munro

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PhoneGap is a library that allows developers to interface directly with a mobile device through the use of its JavaScript libraries. With the multitude of mobile platforms it is very difficult and expensive to create multiple applications in Java, Objective-C, or other native languages. Through the PhoneGap library, most web developers can convert their existing knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into mobile phone applications with very little effort. In this book, I will explore many common features of mobile development and how they are accomplished with PhoneGap. This will include GPS location, maps, media, accelerometers, and much more.

Many of the examples in this book will use basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The PhoneGap API will be accessed exclusively through a variety of JavaScript variables and functions. When PhoneGap does not provide a standard way for implementing a certain look and feel, the jQuery mobile library will be used as well to accomplish a consistent look across multiple devices.

Before beginning with the recipes in this book, be sure to follow the step-by-step tutorials provided by the PhoneGap Getting Started Guide for the device you will be working with.

Once your environment is fully configured, you will also need to download the jQuery and jQuery mobile library. Inside of the www directory (where the index.html file currently resides), two new folders should be created: scripts and css. The JavaScript files from the two downloaded libraries should then be placed within the scripts directory. The CSS file and the images directory from the jQuery mobile library should be placed within the css directory.

These two libraries are not well supported for older versions of BlackBerry (less than version 5.0), so they will be used sparingly to attempt to maximize the exposure of the code.

I will be working with the Android version of the library; however, we will be focusing on HTML, JavaScript, and CSS at all times, so the process will be very device independentthe purpose of PhoneGap!