I think PhoneGap is doing great work, they're obviously getting better, and I don't mean to diminish what others have poured so much effort into.<p>But, are there any successful apps made with PhoneGap? Writing apps in HTML5 is constantly hyped, but there isn't a single HTML app out of the dozens on my iPhone except Netflix. PhoneGap's app gallery doesn't have a single app I've heard of.<p>(The Netflix app isn't too pleasant, either, unfortunately.)
<a href="https://build.phonegap.com/docs/ios-builds" rel="nofollow">https://build.phonegap.com/docs/ios-builds</a><p>"Since PhoneGap Build uses Apple's standard development process to build applications, you will need to sign up for their developer program to build iOS applications on PhoneGap Build. <i>You will also need a Mac</i> to configure your certificate and provisioning profile."<p>:(
I'm writing really a very large app for the company I work for. We're using PhoneGap with HTML and JavaScript and have many plugins.<p>What we are not having problems with is the fact that we only really have a single thread to do everything. All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't my idea to build it this way.
Speaking as someone writing a fairly major HTML5 iOS app using Jo and PhoneGap: this looks like a very helpful way to take the make-work out of the case where you have an app that uses no native functionality, and is not in any way optimized for best appearance.<p>That's not a knock - a lot of people have that use case, and spend a lot of time on their own systems for deploying to multiple platforms. Consider internal apps, for example, that don't have to be massively visually slick and polished.<p>But ... given the very large differences between even similar platforms, and even between versions of platforms, you're not going to be getting much from this if you are building ultra-slick apps in which you really do need consider, say, how hardware acceleration or browser quirks fit into the picture.
Nice, and I use PhoneGap for Android, but you lose all the niceties like access to hardware buttons (which means you convert limited screen space to menus) and keyboard and intents and whatnot.<p>I had to write some plugins to get my game working on Android (and there are still compatibility problems around opening intents), so PhoneGap apps definitely lose something in the usability department.<p>And of course animations are not successful in this environment.<p>Ads are a pain too, if that's important to you, with the Google Admob/Adwords migration happening and the mobile web vs app ambiguity.<p>PhoneGap seems helpful as a part of the app's main UI, but native chrome is still important to completing an app's functionality and usability. I don't see how Build solves that use case.<p>Still, it's a niche.
Great service - I've used it to build a modest application or two for Android and iOS. One caveat: Phonegap plugins that include native components (for example, the Facebook plugin) can't be included in apps built with Phonegap Build (yet).
I started looking at PhoneGap but wasn't happy with Jquery Mobile for the UI. I am now trying out Titanium which offers a similar promise of ease for web/Javascript developers but with more native UI elements. So far so good but developing in Aptana/Eclipse-based Titanium Studio is a drag.<p>The more "consumer" your app the more likely it needs to be mobile. But I think there is probably a large class of apps where PhoneGap/Titanium make sense. Definitely in the internal business category where the audience is finite and the look-and-feel is secondary to the functionality and cost/ease of development and maintenance.
This site is awesome. To try it out, I made a quick one page app, uploaded it, made signing keys, and got it to the Android Marketplace, all inside of a few hours. My first mobile app ever.
This is my favorite example of an expertly-made PhoneGap app: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pCtD4GuAqE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pCtD4GuAqE</a><p>So smooth.
Maybe I'm missing something but given you write the app in HTML/JS it must be difficult to unit test your wrappers for the phonegap functions, as I assume you can't simply pull up your dev site from the phone's browser. I'm thinking particularly about things like the contacts or network status functions.
Funny I just released an application using this method yesterday. Too bad the Apple sales reporting site is down. I wanted to see how well HTML5 Apps sell.<p><a href="http://defyent.com/#astro-dating" rel="nofollow">http://defyent.com/#astro-dating</a>
Very curious to see how they implement this tool.<p>I would think there would have to be some type of "compiler hints" for particular app device builds.
Upload your website, download a native app.<p>What is wrong with this picture? If you can build your app as a web app and don't require hardware access then I'd think twice whether a native app is required.
I may be ignorant, but to write a complex app, don't you need HTML5 AND a mobile javascript framework like JQuery Mobile and Sencha? Or does HTML5 handle that too? If it does require a Javascript framework, that's when the quality deteoriates... I think imitating the look and feel of native apps is easy. Making the performance smooth on the other hand is hard.
How much effort needed to convert my single html with few javascript files to be app-store eligible. I think there is more to just using the phonegap
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