我们选择来自 Angry Robot Zombie Factory 的Simon Madine来了解为什么他会选择PhoneGap来开发他的两个应用。

Q: Tell us about your apps, "Harmonious" and "Elementals".

A: Harmonious is a “smart” sketchpad that uses the lines you've already drawn to influence new lines. You can create some really artistic pieces and then upload them to the harmoniousapp.com gallery site. It uses the Harmony library from Mrdoob, jQTouch for interactions and the Glyphish icons, then wraps the whole thing up in PhoneGap.

Elementals is a fun periodic table where every element has its own personality. It's cartoonish but also contains basic facts so it's a good way to teach kids about the elements.

The core of both apps is the HTML5 canvas element and a big chunk of JavaScript.

Q: Which platforms do your apps run on?

A: Both run on iOS devices and a free version of Harmonious is available as an installable web-app with the same code base. I have an as-yet unreleased Android version of Elementals, but I've just received my beta invite to PhoneGap Build so I'm hoping that will make my non-iOS development a lot easier.

Q: Why did you build Harmonious and Elementals with PhoneGap?

A: Although I used a code desktop and server-side applications, I've been a web developer for many years. When I decided I wanted to build an app there was the choice of either relearning everything from scratch, or applying the skills I've spent the last decade using. I looked at a bunch of frameworks for embedding HTML and JS into apps but the way PhoneGap works made the most sense to me.

Aside from not having to learn Objective-C, I've found the new iPhoneplugins project to be a nice way to bundle together reusable functionality that I've used in a couple of different places. I've contributed to a couple of those plugins (Screenshot and Badge).

Q: Would you use PhoneGap for future development projects?

A: Absolutely. I'm currently working on a PhoneGap app right now aimed at iPhones and Android devices. I've also been recommending it to National Museums Scotland as a low-cost way to reuse a lot of their existing content in handheld devices. As a public organization they have to make the most cost-effective choices and target the largest possible audience so being able to develop content once and make it available in lots of different ways is very appealing.

You can read more about Simon's experience with PhoneGap on his blog.