What is phonegap ?
PhoneGap is an open source mobile development framework. It enables all mobile developers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
It is basically bridging the Gap between the Web and mobile devices.
Native Apps VS WebApps :
Native apps are written in a programming language for targeted operating system.
Eg: Apple iOs devices : iOs SDK using objective c
Android Devices : Android SDK using Java
on the other hand WebApps are Web based applications written in traditional web programming languages.
Eg: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP
Native applications are able to communicate with the Mobile device hardware.
Application built with phonegap is not just a normal web application. They can able to communicate with the mobile hardware, such as accelometer or GPS in ways that are unavailable in normal web applications.
Phonegap applications are also built and packaged like native applications, that means they can distribute through Apple store or Android Market.
Why PhoneGap
Mobile development is a mess, building applications for each devices iPhone, Android mobiles, Windows Phone ect. requires different frameworks and languages.
But PhoneGap does not need those things.
Further more it is an open source implementation. It supports iPhone, Android, Blackberry, WebOs, Windowsphone, and Simbian
How PhoneGap works
Build your app once in web standards
Wrap it with the phoneGap - PhoneGap build you can get get the access to the native APIs
Deploy to multiple platforms
Advantages :
1. Use single code base for multiple platform applications
2. You can leverage the hardware specific features such as Geolocation Accelorometer
3. Open source
4. Requires knowledge of common web technologies rather than multiple distinct platforms
