jQuery Mobile: Up and Running

Packaging with PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an open source platform for compiling native apps from HTML5 code, and it’s fully compatible with jQuery Mobile. PhoneGap (also called Apache CallBack) is managed mainly by Adobe and other important companies. Covering PhoneGap fully is out of the scope of this book. The idea here is to give you the basic information to start with it.

With PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com) we can compile our jQuery Mobile apps for:

• iOS

• Android

• webOS

• Symbian

• BlackBerry

• Windows Phone

When we download PhoneGap, we will receive a ZIP file with package samples for use with every platform SDK and a JavaScript file to include in every HTML file. Up to PhoneGap 1.2, every platform needs its own JavaScript file. This file will normalize some behaviors between platforms and will add some API compatibility.

Warning

If you want to compile an iOS application, you will need a Mac or a cloud-based service. You can easily rent a Mac device using http://macincloud.com.

On iOS, PhoneGap provides an installation mechanism that adds a PhoneGap project type inside Xcode, the official IDE to create native iOS applications. Table 11-2 shows every SDK you need to have installed for compilation.

Table 11-2. SDKs and IDEs required for native compilation

SDK	Device platform	Desktop platforms	Download URL
Xcode	iOS	Mac OS	Available on Mac AppStore
ADT for Eclipse	Android	Win/Mac/Linux	http://developer.android.com
WebWorks SDK	BlackBerry	Win/Mac	http:// blackberry.com/developers
Visual Studio for WP	Windows Phone ...