As part of a hosted project for Famo.us, yesterday I got to meet with Lorin Beer and get introduced to the new hottness from Abode’s work with PhoneGap / Cordova: The PhoneGap Developer app.
If you’re at all interested in using PhoneGap to create apps across a variety of mobile platforms, you’re going to want to know about this. Using it, you can easily try out your PhoneGap app on an iPhone or Android device — accessing all of it’s native functions — without having to go through all the normal app store / deploy headaches of going through their app packaging channels.
Check it out!
Get the PhoneGap Developer app
Getting started is pretty simple. Using the native app store for your device (e.g. App Store on iOS or Google Play on Android) find the “PhoneGap Developer” application and install it.
Setting up an app
If you already have a PhoneGap app you want to try, you can skip this step. If not, here’s a quick and easy way to get started:
- First, install PhoneGap on your computer.
- From your terminal type
phonegap create <directory name> - Type
cd <directory name>
This will create a demo “hello world” application in the directory you specified.
Serving your app
This step is super easy. From your terminal type phonegap serve
Then note the ip address and port number listed there.
Open the PhoneGap Developer app
Open the app. The first screen prompts you to enter the ip address and port number given to you on the previous step.
Important: Make sure your computer and mobile device are connected to the same network. (Usually a WiFi network)
Open your app
You’re almost there. Now you just have to tap the “Connect” button shown on your screen.
Your app should now be running on your modile device in all of it’s native-app-like glory.
Such is the power of PhoneGap and JavaScript.
Why use the app?
Use the PhoneGap developer app instead of the native web browser whenever you want to test out native functionality on your mobile device that is not available from that device’s web browser.