Question

I have a very basic query related to phonegap and android tablet. I donot have the setup currently with me to verify.

I need to know if the development of Android phone and tablet using Phonegap differs, in term of build or any other thing which i should know before starting development

Answer 1

This question is not very descriptive, but I’ll throw you a few tips for phonegap development on android:

1. Develop your layout using chrome/safari.
2. Make sure your layout is touch friendly and looks good at 320px, 480px, and 768px wide
3. Don’t overdue it on mobile touch frameworks such as “sencha touch”. Your app is guaranteed to not feel 100% like a native app and trying to make it feel more native by using one of these can actually have the opposite effect when users start noticing animations being sluggish or buttons and new screens not behaving as normal.
4. Find an android device to test on that’s very mid-grade. Don’t make the mistake of using a high end device to test on and seeing smooth javascript/css3 animations only to find out that on the majority of the devices, the android ‘WebView’ has pretty mediocre performance.

Honestly, it’s really not that hard to make an application that has all of the functionality that phonegap offers as a native android app. There are plenty of codesamples and books to help you along the way, great resources (such as SO) to post questions or find answers on. I understand you may want to use phonegap for cross-platform compatibility but if you’re looking for ‘native feel’ and cross-platform compatibility, you may want to look at appcelerator titanium instead. Yes, you’ll have to learn their API – but you’ll have to learn some of that with phonegap already (and you are still using javascript).