If you want to easily develop web applications by making use of the latest web technologies you love such as the JavaScript, CSS and HTML then PhoneGap is an amazing open source free android framework that will let you build mobile applications with the use of standard web application programming interface for the platforms you are interested in.
Phone Gap is an android framework that will help you get rid of the pain of developing mobile applications. You merely have to upload your JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS assets to the Phone Gap Build cloud service and it will deal with the entire process of compiling.
One can make the best out of the Phone Gap by building great web applications that are powered by various open web standards. The best thing about Phone Gap is that it will help you cut down on the development time by allowing you to reuse the existing web dev skills, tools and frameworks. You can get best in class benefits by developing cross –platform compatible web applications the way you want.
Advantages of Using Phone Gap
- You do not have to deal with the headache of maintaining local SDK’s as Phone Gap will take care of it in the cloud and the web app will at all times be developed with the most recent SDK for the android platform.
- You will be able to increase your productivity whilst decreasing your production time. You can target several platforms such as Blackberry, iOS, Windows, Android and WebOS all in just one codebase.
- You can work together by creating roles for the team mates within the Phone Gap build projects so as to ramp up collaboration.
- You can make use of the Hydration features so as to make the process of debugging and building cycles much faster. If you compile builds faster the updates to your apps will be pushed directly to the previously installed application version of the tester so as to make sure that everybody is working on the latest version.
- You can easily share you web applications and promote the projects to a bigger audience so that you can review them with your colleagues or clients and share them with your friends or family. So when your application is ready you merely need to send the link so that people can download the app, install it devoid of having to connect to a PC.
If you wish to build a high-end, cost effective product with Rapid prototyping characteristics in that case Phone Gap is the Android framework for you as you can integrate it easily with the build pipeline. The web apps developed using the Phone Gap framework have their personal individual icons which will function just like the native applications without any browser frame around it. The apps developed with Phone Gap will be distributed to the Application Stores and they will as well have way in to a group of native functions so as to further make them function as though they are native web applications.
One of the significant reason why Android Developers use Phone Gap is because they can have one single codebase for their entire application code and they will not have to reinvent the wheel every time they shift from one platform to another. If you want to deal with the device specific requirements with Phone Gap then you need to understand that this completely depends upon the feature set. Most of the web applications do not require device specific characteristics ahead of the User Interface however there are so many plug-INS that will be of great help in assisting you with this approach.