On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first analog mobile phone call using a heavy prototype model. The year was 1973 when the first hand held mobile device was introduced to the world. History has a great way of showing you how the present day and time has been molded, created, and how exciting the future shall be with technology.
Fast forward to the present day, which is January 16th 2012 and you can see a huge change in mobile usage and data consumption. The heaviest contributor to the digital mobile revolution would be Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android mobile operating systems. I would like to add that we must not forget about the other mobile operating systems like Windows and Blackberry making ample contributions. Developing for these platforms has taken learning their OS, which is not a easy task if your wanting to cover multiple platforms. In fact, most companies hire multiple developers to accomplish reaching a wide mobile user base!! Most companies pay quite a lot of money to hire various developers to accomplish simple applications. Many are looking for solutions that will cut costs, and minimize multiple developers on payroll.
Introducing PhoneGap an HTML5 app platform created by Nitobi who was recently acquired by Adobe. The app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores. PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best… HTML and JavaScript! Now as a Web Designer that’s studying JavaScript and HTML5 technology this really excites and motivates me to learn more. The ability to create CROSS PLATFORM MOBILE APPS shall definitely be a required skill set for digital web specialists. In my learning web development, the trend of smart devices will surely grow and responsive design shall be required to reach multiple screens and users.
Check out these videos for an example of PhoneGap in Action, this video is roughly 2 years old but it gives you a great idea of how you can use PhoneGap in the XCode IDE. The next video is using the Geolocation API and showing you various positions using Ripple [click for video] who was acquired recently by BlackBerry. And finally the last video shows you Sencha Touch a UI based JavaScript Framework which is quite innovative and will add to user interaction with PhoneGap. The possibilities are endless, and soon ill have a Mac in which I’ll start experimenting with recording some basic applications. I definitely want to start so that I can gain feedback, this blog will show my growth in my development and programming skills! If your interested in having a PhoneGap Meetup here in Dallas Texas, comment below and we shall reach out to PhoneGap and see what workshops and events we can have to explore it fully.
