Development Tips when using PhoneGap Build Plugins

Plugins are an incredibly useful way to bring native functionality to PhoneGap apps. Once you start including them though, complexity can skyrocket, mainly because you are now dependent on actual devices to test. This can lead to frustration as feedback loops are increased. To help shorten these, follow these tips:

Practice safe programming practices: add a check that the plugin exists before attempting to use it: 

if (window.plugins !== undefined && window.plugins.myPlugin !== undefined) {

Creating a Windows Phone 8 app with PhoneGap Build

Like many, I began with an iOS and Android version of my PhoneGap app. As of April 2014, adding the third option, Windows Phone 8, lacks complete documentation (PhoneGap Build) or is confusing because of too much documentation (Microsoft!).  Once you figure out what to do, it’s actually quite easy.  Follow my minimal guide to get your app configured for PhoneGap Build and deployed to a Windows Phone 8 device.

KendoUI Mobile Tip: Add Data Icon anywhere within ListView Item

In Kendo UI Mobile’s ListView demo, the “data-icon” attribute is added to each list item element, in order to create an icon image from Kendo UI’s standard set of icons:

<ul>
    <li data-icon=”toprated”><a>Boston</a></li>
    <li data-icon=”toprated”><a>Chicago</a></li>
</ul>

The example above positions the toprated icon on the left side; what if you want to position them somewhere else or even dynamically?  Initially I tried to add the data icon to the far right by putting it on a simple span tag.  This doesn’t work though: