Cordova (PhoneGap)

Apache Cordova (formerly known as PhoneGap) is one of the most popular mobile app development frameworks. It was initially developed by Nitobi, and its purpose is to enable developers to build mobile applications using CSS3, HTML and JavaScript, instead of relying (like before) on platform-specific APIs. Apache Cordova enables features from JavaScript and HTML to function properly on mobile devices. The apps developed using this framework are hybrid apps, and although the apps are not built using the specific APIs of the mobile platforms, they have access to native platform features.

Advantages

  • Apache Cordova relies on popular languages, such as: CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript
  • Thanks to its popularity and the fact that it is open source, a large developer community has grown, which can provide advice and answers to almost any issue
  • The framework receives constant updates
  • Although it’s mostly based on web technologies, the framework supports most hardware capabilities of a phone, such as: Accelerometer, GPS, Camera, Geo-location, Files etc.
  • A developer can upload an app made with Apache Cordova to both Play Store and App Store

Disadvantages

  • Even though the framework it’s open source and the community is pretty large, expert development companies are very scarce
  • Unlike some of its direct competitors, Adobe does not offer much direct professional support
  • The plugins don’t have (for the most part) detailed description about them, and this means that it will take a while until the plugin is fully integrated into the framework

Development tools

  • Visual Studio
  • Eclipse
  • NetBeans

Versions

  • Cordova Android
  • Cordova BlackBerry
  • Cordova Browser
  • Cordova FirefoxOS
  • Cordova iOS
  • Cordova OSX
  • Cordova Ubuntu
  • Cordova Windows
  • Cordova WebOS
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