Chapter 1. Introduction to PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a hybrid application framework that enables you to build native applications using HTML and JavaScript. Developers can write code once and deploy their application across multiple mobile operating systems. PhoneGap provides a JavaScript programming interface that allows you to access features related to the operating system with plain JavaScript. This chapter covers information about PhoneGap and setting up your development environment.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Understanding what PhoneGap is all about
• Get an overview of the history of Apache Cordova/PhoneGap
• The evolution of PhoneGap and Cordova
• Learn the differences between the mobile web and mobile app
• Learn how to configure your development environment and all the dependencies
• Learn how to create a new project using JBoss, Xcode, and Visual Studio