Book Image

Mastering PhoneGap Mobile Application Development

By : Kerri Shotts
Book Image

Mastering PhoneGap Mobile Application Development

By: Kerri Shotts

Overview of this book

PhoneGap is a useful and flexible tool that enables you to create complex hybrid applications for mobile platforms. In addition to the core technology, there is a large and vibrant community that creates third-party plugins that can take your app to the next level. This book will guide you through the process of creating a complex data-driven hybrid mobile application using PhoneGap, web technologies, and third-party plugins. A good foundation is critical, so you will learn how to create a useful workflow to make development easier. From there, the next version of JavaScript (ES6) and the CSS pre-processor SASS are introduced as a way to simplify creating the look of the mobile application. Responsive design techniques are also covered, including the flexbox layout module. As many apps are data-driven, you'll build an application throughout the course of the book that relies upon IndexedDB and SQLite. You'll also download additional content and address how to handle in-app purchases. Furthermore, you’ll build your own customized plugins for your particular use case. When the app is complete, the book will guide you through the steps necessary to submit your app to the Google Play and Apple iTunes stores.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Mastering PhoneGap Mobile Application Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 4. More Responsive Design

One very common question asked about Cordova and PhoneGap is how does one properly handle different screen sizes? Unfortunately, this question is often asked when it's already very late in the development process, at which point it is difficult to introduce the appropriate fixes into the code. The developer has built the app with hard-coded sizes, usually ignoring aspect ratio differences, and any fix is now expensive to implement. As such, it is critical to implement your app such that it responds to the size of your user's device from the very start of your app's development.

HTML is naturally responsive, but it's easy to break this natural responsiveness if you use pixel-based origins and sizes. As long as you avoid these pitfalls where possible and use percentages and absolute and relative positioning, your app will naturally scale to whatever screen it finds itself on. The results may not be what you desire (too much whitespace or too cramped), but these...