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

The CSS3 units


You're probably familiar with the typical CSS units such as px (pixel), pt (point), and em (font-size). There are others that are used more often in print situations, such as in (inch) and cm (centimeter). You should also be familiar with specifying percentages so that your content can resize appropriately.

Unfortunately, these units, though very well supported, aren't as flexible as modern application development may require. Thankfully, CSS3 has added several new units that we can use to our advantage, and they are becoming reasonably well supported on mobile platforms.

The em unit indicates font-size for a specific element. If an element's font-size is 20px, then 1em is also 20px. This has been useful in the past, because it is easy to adjust the size of elements based upon the font-size. The rem unit is an extension of this unit. rem is short for root em and it allows us to specify a root em size that is consistent throughout the document. That is, if we specify font-size...