Chapter 1: PhoneGap and Enterprise Mobility

The enterprise has always focused on providing solutions that enable its users to access important data

in a variety of ways.

PhoneGap/Cordova is a framework that enables the enterprise to target multiple smartphone platforms with a single code base using technologies the enterprise is already largely familiar with.

Furthermore, since PhoneGap/Cordova provides developers with access to the native features of the user's mobile device, it also provides the necessary technologies to interact with the enterprise's systems over a variety of networks.

PhoneGap/Cordova apps are neither purely web-based, nor are they purely native-based; they are a blend of the two.

PhoneGap is a distribution of Cordova and is very similar to Cordova.

In earlier versions, it was distributed in the form of project templates that could be used in Xcode or Eclipse to create hybrid apps.

In 2011, Adobe purchased Nitobi Software. As part of the acquisition, the PhoneGap code was 

contributed to Apache and made open source. The project was ultimately rename as Apache Cordova.

Adobe kept the PhoneGap name and began maintaining a fork of Apache Cordova's code. As such, the

version was changed to 2.x. Generally, the two were largely identical.

Apache Cordova 3.x was released in July 2013. It provided a new CLI that dramatically simplified

cross-platform development while also making plugin installation easier and less problematic than before.

It also decoupled many of the core features and distributed them as core plugins instead.

Easy cross-platform development