I have a problem understanding how phonegap works and i cannot find the answer in docs.
I installed phonegap on windows and phone device and played around with codes in www/* folder.
However, when I use phonegap-build to make my android app it extracted the files from platforms/browser but not the www/*
I know it sounds stupid but should i make different apps for different devices in different folders?, i know this cannot be true. so my question is:
If I make an app inside www/index.html how can I convert them to android .apk app?
Android WebView used to display web pages in native applications. But, Phonegap is a tool which is used to develop hybrid applications using html and javascript. Don't confuse with Android webview and phonegap. Both used for different purpose. You have to use separate folder for each projects.
Converting Your Phonegap App to an Android App w/ PhoneGap
Difference between a native application and a cross-platform mobile application
Related
I have tried some App Builder to build the mobile application such as Seattle Cloud, now I want try to build an android application without using the App Builder, but I figured out the page's extension is .HTML in the App Builder, but when I using Android Studio to build the app, the layout is using XML. I have experience to develop web application using PHP and now I want try to build an Android Application to view information from my web application, I feel confused, How should I start?
You can use Phonegap for hybrid app development using web technologies such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript and jQuery.
Other similar options available are Titanium SDK and Sencha Touch, but you will take time to get well with them. They are better than Phonegap in some areas, also device api support is available.
Whatever framework you use to build hybrid apps, you will have their respective js files and css to achieve functions. Some combine with PhoneGap in the end to use device api's, so it is better to go with PhoneGap or something like Titanium or Sencha. You may also have a look at Ionic framework, it uses AngularJS, HTML and CSS.
Use WebView. It's a view that displays web pages. You can use local html files as well as a URL. For more information:
http://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/webview.html
Android works in a very different compared to web apps. the design of the application is done in XML which will create native UI components and will be much faster the HTML counterparts.
There are different frameworks for developing an android app based on HTML/JavaScript
Sencha touch
Phonegap
Appcelerator Titanium (Although this may not be a pure HTML framework)
see: How to create an android app using HTML 5
But compared to apps based on HTML frameworks, native apps will be faster, consumes lower memory.
Visit http://developer.android.com/training/index.html to get started.
I am planning to develop a cross platform mobile app.
My app has to deal with camera, organizing pics.. I am planning to use PhoneGap for building the app. I need to select a user friendly IDE for developing my app. There are so many Editors in the market.
This is my first app and I am very confused which would be a best one to use. I am developing my app on Mac. I need a simple, user-friendly Editor.
Can someone please suggest what pros and cons do I have using different Editors and a better one to use?
I am currently using Monaca for developing mobile apps using PhoneGap. It includes an IDE for developing by simply using web browser. The good thing is that you write your code just using HTML5 and Javascript and deploy it to the platform such iOS, Android and Windows 8.
There is a guide here for create a simple app with camera using PhoneGap and JQuery mobile. It is very simple to do. You can have a try.
For Cordova/PhoneGap development right on iOS devices we developed GapCoder IDE.
I'm starting to get into turing an iPad app I made with phonegap and converting it to become an android app as well. But where as Xcode lets you specify iPad only, I'm not seeing this option any where in the new Android Studio IDE. Is this an option when working with Android? Any ideas or help is appreciated.
XCode would not give you an option to convert your iOS app for Android. If you are going the native way, then you use XCode for the iOS app and Eclipse for the Android app. If you want to save time and effort, then framework like PhoneGap is created for this very purpose. Instead of using Objective C or Java, you create the app with HTML, JS and CSS and it would work on all major supported platforms of PhoneGap.
About the form factor/screen size, Eclipse does not filter on screen size, however the Play Store does and this is controlled by the supports-screens manifest attribute.
How does PhoneGap work? (I'm still going through all their faqs, etc.) I downloaded the andriod sdk and installed PhoneGap stuff and also got the Hello World working on the Android emulator. Now how do I port that to actually test in say on an iPhone?
Using PhoneGap you done all your work using only HTML/CSS/JavaScript. PhoneGap has different builds for different architectures and your project is just WebView for architecture you want to. Simply if you need to port your PhoneGap app for iOS you need to download project template for XCode and move all your HTML/CSS/JS code into the project. Just remember that portability of PhoneGap is just because of WebView and solid JS interfaces for different phones. You actually does not need to know what lies under PhoneGap just use WWW technologies.
Even after searching PhoneGap's website and their support group, I still cannot find an answer to my question:
Currently, I'm planning on developing an application that should exists as a pure HTML5 application, being able to run in any modern browser (Google Chrome, Safari, etc.) as well as on Android/iPad as native mobile applications.
So my question is:
Is it possible to use the same code base to develop both pure HTML5 applications as well as native mobile applications with PhoneGap?
PhoneGap is in effect a runtime environment for HTML, javascript, and any CSS that may accompany your code. So in short:
Yes, but it is recommended that you have some knowledge of Objective-C if you want to develop any iPhone app with extended functionality. If you have the right dimensions/proportions for the code there is no reason why you cannot simply copy that code into PhoneGap and compile it.
See, the support for #HTML5 varies from browser to browser, and varies a lot from a desktop browser to mobile browser. If one has to convert web-portal to a mobile application that can easily be done through Phonegap, you can refer to this link also. https://build.phonegap.com/ It worked fine for me.
Now lets come to Phonegap, what phonegap does is it has created wrapper through javascript that calls the native apis. Now to show content they use WebView object which renders your html5 page in your app. And you can create your own wrappers too. Not that much difficult.
So if your app is only a web based portal, that does not need much native access, you can easily reuse one codebase make #cross-platform apps using Phonegap. Else you need to go for hybrid apps.