If you put enough effort into the development process, your users might not even realize that they are not using a native application. This means that building your code for iOS will produce an IPA file, for Android an APK file, and building for Windows Phone produces an XAP file. As mobile devices evolve, adding support for additional hardware is simply a matter of developing new plugins.įinally, Cordova applications install just like native applications. On iOS, this is the default Objective-C UIWebView or a custom WKWebView class on Android, this is .Īpache Cordova comes with a set of pre-developed plugins which provide access to the device’s camera, GPS, file system, etc. The web view used by Cordova is the same web view used by the native operating system. You can consider Cordova to be an application container with a web view, which covers the entire screen of the device. What you get with Cordova is simply a JavaScript API, which serves as a wrapper for native code and is consistent across devices.

In essence, Cordova has no limitations in relation to natively developed applications. This Apache Cordova review and tutorial will examine Cordova app development in more detail, and while some of it may apply to PhoneGap, this shouldn’t be considered a PhoneGap tutorial, per se. With time, Adobe PhoneGap developed its own set of proprietary features, while Cordova was-and still is-supported by the open-source community. Obviously, the differences between Cordova and PhoneGap were minimal in the beginning. A common analogy you will often run into is that Cordova is to PhoneGap what WebKit is to Chrome or Safari. What happened was, Adobe acquired Nitobi in 2011, and donated the open-source core to the Apache Software Foundation, who rebranded it Apache Cordova. In Nitobi’s vision, most mobile applications would soon be developed using PhoneGap, but developers would still have the option of writing native code when necessary, be it due to performance issues, or lack of a method of accessing specific hardware. In 2009, a startup called Nitobi created PhoneGap, an open source API for accessing native mobile resources, with the goal of enabling developers to create mobile applications using standard web technologies. This is where becoming a well-versed Apache Cordova developer can come in handy by providing a way to develop mobile applications using standard web technologies-HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. However, developing for each separate mobile platform can be an exhaustive task, especially if your resources are limited, or if you are a single developer rather than a mobile app development company. Note: Since this was originally written, I've updated this article to work with and applications are creeping in everywhere, starting with smartphones and tablets, to smart watches, and soon be found in other wearables, too.

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