Question

I have read and analyse some examples of creating Apps with Phonegap and I have seen, that the whole development process if I work in Eclipse with the emulators is very slow.

I thought maybe I can develop all the JavaScript and Templates stuff on normal browser, debug there very fast and create the screens and after that, when there is coming the time for using some special stuff for the mobile phone like camera or database, then to copy the whole project to the asset/www folder and make there the final implementation.

What do you thing? Will be this possible, or am I missing something?

Answer 1

You’re right, for example you can ..

1. create it as a web app using html 5, javascript and css;
2. use a library like jQuery Mobile, you’ll be creating a one-page app (in index.html) and jQuery Mobile will provide lots of useful phone UI functionality (that will work on different phone browsers – which means that phonegap can create apps targeting different platforms);
3. test it in the browser;
4. add the Ripple Emulator to the Chrome browser to test looks and functionality in the phone emulator;
5. test it out as a web app that would run on a phone;
6. as you suggest, copy all the web app files into the www folder.
7. now add the phoneGap functionality, build the app and start testing it on real phones;

I found that by developing and testing it as a web app first, I could get user feedback and fix bugs much quicker. It is a great way to quickly build a phone app.