Another look at phoneGap

Finally got around to completing the Getting started guide with Android  from phoneGap, so have a bit of feedback on the process.

As a concept this is basically how it shapes up,

• Eclipse is the favoured development environment for phoneGap to integrate with, and maybe android too, although I am sure there are others around.
• Android SDK basically the bits and pieces that make it possible to develop for android, I am assuming this includes the emulator and drivers etc.
• ADT Plugin this I think is the plugin which links Eclipse software to the Android SDK and needs a little config to get it working.
• Finally we get to Cordova which is the java and javascript which in my mind is 'phoneGap'

Android SDK Manager, you will see this screen a lot asking to update items, I suggest you do!

Ok so the concept there, how easy is it to get going, Eclipse is easy, a compressed file which you can extract to anywhere in your computer, same with Cordova. Android SDK is a simple install, most difficult part is the ADT Plugin, but the instructions are easy to follow.

Eclipse after install and attempt at multiple HelloWorlds

I had no problem at all running through the HelloWorld program and deploying to the simulator/emulator for android. The index.html rendered and all was good in the world definitely felt like a native app.
The virtual android device I set up was a Samsung Galaxy S2 4.0.3 but my computer was running it fairly slowly, so I would suggest you either have a decent computer with a good video card or it may struggle. I didn't want to test with a simulator anyway as I have a HTC Desire phone to play with.

Virtual Device Manager for Android, create all the phones/devices you want.

Problem was that all the documentation was saying that it should be displayed as an option after you switch on USB Debugging on the phone. I checked in device manager (im running windows 7) and found an odd device called 'ADB' which had an ominous exclamation mark next to it, indicating there was a problem with the driver. After a bit of searching I found a great article with a link to the HTC driver after I updated and installed Eclipse could see my device, yay!

I ran the helloworld app on the device it worked. A simple native app deployed and tested without knowing one bit of android code. Next is to see how far I can push the loading of the app using kendo UI really interested to see how it performs.

First blog post should be an interesting development, diving into PhoneGap to see how easy it is to take an existing HTML5, CSS, JS web application and making it native.

Just trying it out at this stage, also want to have a look into how this will work with Kendo UI 

Hopefully will be a smooth transition across as PhoneGap is touting that it is somewhat simple to make this transition. Fingers crossed.


First step is to head over to the getting started guide for Android as I am planning to test first on Android, then will move to iOS. Will post soon with any issues that occur during installation and first app.