Recently I have received some demand of building HTML5 mobile app on Windows Phone Mango. Hence, I think it is a good chance to introduce PhoneGap this HTML5 mobile framework, which has full suports for Windows Phone Mango.

If you are using PhoneGap this kind of framework, you are building a hybrid application. What is a hybrid application? It is an application that runs with browser components, but could be able to utilize the phone functionality (such as camera, geolocation, notification and etc). Hybrid application is downloadable through marketplace as well. To the end user, there is no difference from hybrid and native application. But for our developers, it is a huge different. If developer wants to build native application for all different platform, he needs to use C# for Windows Phone, Objective-C for iPhone and Java for Android. However, if developer building hybrid application, he only needs to take care of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Question: Why should we consider HTML5 mobile?

If you are a developer targeting on multiple platform (Wp7, iOS, Android), using standard technology (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript) is a very cost-effective choice for you.

Question: How does this compare to native application?

Hybrid application utilized the power of browser rendering engine.  However, native application will be able to utilize the graphic APIs of the operating system. Hence, hybrid application couldn’t achieve game-quality graphics.

Moreover, take windows phone platform as a sample. Application Bar is a very useful control developer usually uses for layering their applications.

For hybrid application, since its just HTMl and CSS, you need to figure out the layout yourself by coding.  Even there will be templates in the future, it is just mimicking the control and it won’t be as convenient as using native SDK.  Please check PhoneGap on Windows Phone Tips series (5 Tips in the end of this article) for mimicking native control, such as Live tiles, Deep linking, handling orientation.

Here is all the references: 

PhoneGap Get Start Guide for WP:Start Guide | GetStart video 1 | GetStart video2
PhoneGap API Reference: Reference
PhoneGap official Wiki: Wiki

Useful tutorials:

• Developing Windows Phone 7 HTML5 apps with PhoneGap: Tutorial
• [New]HTML5 and CSS3 on Windows Phone: Dark and Light Styles: link
• [New]HTML5 and CSS3 on Windows Phone: A Simple Boilerplate: link
• Windows Phone App on Visual Studio Video
• HTML 5 LocalStorage Mobile Web Application with PhoneGap for Windows Phone 7: Link
• PhoneGap on Windows Phone Tips series:
  PhoneGap on WP7 tip #1: Handling Orientation< link >
  PhoneGap on WP7 Tip #2: Script interaction < link >
  PhoneGap on WP7 Tip #3: Sending SMS and intro to Plugins < link >
  PhoneGap on WP7 Tip #4: The Application Bar < link >
  PhoneGap on WP7 Tip #5: Live Tiles and Deep Linking < link >

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