"PhoneGap Build Fundamentals" Pluralsight course released!

I’m excited to announce that my Pluralsight course, PhoneGap Build Fundamentals, is now live! This course will teach you the fundamentals of creating cross-platform mobile apps using Adobe’s PhoneGap Build cloud service and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Please leave any questions or feedback on the Discussion tab. Thanks for checking it out!

Here’s a longer description of the course:

The demand for mobile application developers is extremely high. However, learning each platform’s native programming language and toolsets can be a significant, time consuming challenge. Fortunately, there’s a better way! In this course, you will reuse your existing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills to create mobile apps. Leveraging Adobe’s PhoneGap Build cloud service, you’ll build a complete app from scratch that is app store-ready. First, the course will cover the structure and configuration of a web-based mobile app. Next, you’ll discover how to make the app feel native by adding plugins, how to test on mobile devices, and how to troubleshoot real world issues that may arise. Finally, you’ll learn the entire app store submission process, from signing up for a developer account to releasing an app on all the major platforms. By the end of this course, you’ll be comfortable creating professional, web-based mobile applications using PhoneGap Build.

List of Supported PhoneGap Versions on PhoneGap Build

As you’ve probably noticed, PhoneGap Build shows a helpful reminder when the Default version of PhoneGap has been updated:

Seeing the platform-specific version numbers (iOS, Android, Windows) is useful for, among other things, troubleshooting purposes. Perhaps a plugin works with iOS 4.2.5, but after upgrading to 4.3.1, it stops working.

Where is this list published? As it turns out, the page link is a bit hidden, mentioned briefly in a couple of spots in the documentation:

Startups: Consider Building Native Web Apps!

As a startup, competing with well established, larger, incumbent companies is incredibly difficult. Among their many advantages, they’ve had more time and resources to build amazing products.

On top of that, your customers don’t care about the size of your company.

They expect a world-class experience, while assuming that:

1. You have an army of developers, ready to react to their suggestions immediately.
2. You can provide 24/7 social media/customer support.
3. Your products should be free, forever.

It’s tough out there! You need any advantage you can get. For your technology stack, consider using web technology (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to build your web, mobile, and desktop apps. When combined with Cordova/PhoneGap, you can use a single codebase to build mobile apps for every major app store! Most importantly, this “native web” approach means you can: