erik daniel

As a result of the success of the Volksagen iPad app I created with Alex Luchko, I was asked to present an introductory talk on PhoneGap at MobiDevDay in February. I meant to post about it a month ago, but the holidays happened and it got away from me. Consequently, MobiDevDay is sold out. Sorry! I can still sing the praises of PhoneGap, which is what this post is about.

According to their site:

PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores.

That is apparently marketing speak for kick-ass. Beyond just being awesome, PhoneGap gives you the power to take an HTML, CSS, and Javascript Web Application and wrap it in a compiled native app on 6 different device architectures. Why is that cool? Well that means you can have one code base that runs on iOS and Android devices (as well as Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian if you are into it).

There are a few other things that, from my personal perspective, makes it wicked. First, it's open source. Released under the MIT License, there won't be any licensing bullshit. Second, it is really easy to extend. Write a quick Objective-C or Java Class to handle your heavy duty work, and PhoneGap can expose your new API to Javascript, allowing it to run in your app. Third, since it doesn't spawn your files using file://whatever, you can easily skirt the same origin policy that is often a stumbling block to web-based apps.

I'll be setting up a presentation for MobiDevDay. When I do, I'll post it here as well.