So far, we have discussed building mobile ArcGIS web apps. These are application which run in a browser. Let's imagine we want to build a mobile app which we can distribute in the various mobile app stores. An app which has access to the various sensors on a mobile device. A single code base which will run on all major mobile platforms: Android, iOS, Windows and Blackberry. Welcome to PhoneGap.

PhoneGap extends the features of HTML and JavaScript to work on a mobile device. Applications developed with PhoneGap are called hybrid. They are neither native (which rely on a platform's native UI framework) nor web-based. All layout rendering is done using web views, with the app having access to the native device APIs.

Nitobi developed PhoneGap which was purchased by Adobe in 2011. Cordova is the open source project that is the basis of PhoneGap. Though the names are somewhat interchangeable, PhoneGap is the trademarked name of the product that is today used by Adobe, mostly...