Blogs

This is a very exciting time in the industry and for our team. However, it’s also a time of great change which is often met with skepticism and possibly some fear. Let’s get to the point: PhoneGap and all the code that makes it awesome is staying free and open source. Maybe more so than ever with our contribution to the Apache Software Foundation.

I feel the team at Nitobi and the rest of the of our contributors did a great job getting PhoneGap to where it is today. We shipped 1.0 this summer and have been making great progress since, in fact we just shipped PhoneGap 1.1 last week. It’s time to step on the gas and accelerate development of the platform, both from our team (now Adobe:)) and the wider community, which is why we’re putting PhoneGap in the Apache Software Foundation.

The issue of cross-platform app development is just now hitting mainstream attention and PhoneGap will come under increasing competitive threats. We think building on an open platform is essential to ensuring the web wins, and under Apache we can collaborate with all those who share this vision. No doubt we will compete with others and now we can do so with the support of Adobe, another company firmly committed to the web and cross platform tools and solutions.

We’ve built Nitobi on a bootstrap. We’ve built other great products over the years but now we’re on to something bigger and bolder. It’s really a movement around building apps and services with web technologies that run everywhere. We now need to focus our whole team on PhoneGap, PhoneGap Build and other tooling around HTML5 and JS development. The web and technologies that support it need fostering and support in an open manner. I’m excited to work on that!

We’re also launching PhoneGap Build with the help of a team that’s been building something awesome—cloud tools and infrastructure on top of Amazon Web Services. We’re committed to pushing forward with more cloud-based tooling and services that will help developers. We announced PhoneGap Build is in open beta last week and we’re getting ready to roll out for full on prime-time commercial use soon. We’ll be adding features and fixing bugs every day as usual. We’ll be honouring all existing client projects, support and training. We may be finding other partners and solutions to help deliver those services that are vital to the eco-system. Otherwise, it’s business as usual!

The whole team is moving to Adobe and this was very important to me. Some of us will move to SF to have more influence in the Adobe mothership and some of us will stay in Vancouver to continue to grow and foster the culture around the PhoneGap project that’s made it so great. I’m going to SF which is a great opportunity but I’ll miss the Vancouver office Kegerator. It’s really still just the beginning for PhoneGap and our team. The Nitobi team is amazing and they are some of the most talented, smart, creative, loyal and funny group of people I’ve ever worked with. I’m looking forward to continuing our journey together.

At Adobe, we will be able to focus and work together more closely than ever without the constraints and distractions you have when running a small business. I’m also excited to be joining some of the smartest minds in the industry at Adobe. Their contributions to open source and the web have largely flown under the radar. Adobe has 2 contributors to the WebKit project and have played a key role in the jQuery Mobile project. Now you tell me that WebKit + jQuery + PhoneGap don’t make up the most killer trio in the mobile web and app space. If you doubt Adobe’s intentions, it’s important to consider how Adobe makes money—it’s from tools, services and solutions not shipping runtimes.

Oh ya and given that I’m moving to California…I’ll probably learn how to surf too;-)

Today we’re excited to announce that we have entered into a definitive agreement with Adobe Systems Incoporated for Nitobi, including PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. Here’s the news:

Adobe Announces Agreement to Acquire Nitobi, Creator of PhoneGap

Open Source HTML5 Mobile App Platform Accelerates Adobe’s HTML5 and Web Standards Strategy

LOS ANGELES — Oct. 3, 2011 — At its MAX 2011 technology conference, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Nitobi Software, the creator of PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. PhoneGap is a popular open source platform for easily building fast, cross-platform mobile applications with HTML5 and JavaScript. With PhoneGap, Adobe® will offer developers the choice of two powerful solutions for cross-platform development of native mobile apps, one using HTML5 and JavaScript with PhoneGap and the other using Adobe Flash® with Adobe AIR®. PhoneGap’s open source framework has been downloaded more than 600,000 times to date and thousands of applications built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores that span devices based on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and other operating systems.

“PhoneGap has proven to be an industry-defining app solution for HTML5 developers,” said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager, Platform, Adobe. “PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest Web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver® CS5.5. It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”

“Adobe has always been a big supporter of the open source community and at the forefront of enabling rich, Web based applications across screens,” said Andre Charland, chief executive officer, Nitobi. “We share the same philosophy about enabling extraordinary mobile and Web applications. Becoming part of the Adobe family with its industry-leading tools and technologies opens up amazing new opportunities for PhoneGap and our customers.”

“We are also excited to announce our donation of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation,” said Dave Johnson, chief technology officer, Nitobi. “Adobe has been fully supportive of our decision, further demonstrating Adobe’s continued commitment to the developer and open source communities. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for contributors to collaborate on open source product development and Adobe and Nitobi look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the PhoneGap technology.”

Nitobi is based in Vancouver, Canada and Nitobi’s employees are expected to join Adobe. The acquisition is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of October 2011. Terms were not disclosed.

Adobe today also released its third public preview of Adobe Edge, the new HTML5 motion and interaction design tool that is bringing Flash-like animation to websites and mobile apps using the latest capabilities of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The new release contains innovative interactivity features and other additions suggested by the development community, and enables content creators to easily deliver a new level of visual richness to HTML5-only websites and mobile apps.

Adobe has also extended existing tools like Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash Professional to bring the next generation of Web standards to designers and developers who rely on those tools. Adobe today released the new CSS3 Mobile Pack for Adobe Fireworks®, which will enable designers to easily extract CSS3 from their design elements in Fireworks and quickly add them to their HTML based websites and mobile applications.

Adobe continues to work closely with the HTML5 community to make important contributions to the W3C and key open source projects like WebKit and JQuery. Adobe has co-authored with Microsoft and submitted to the W3C a proposal for CSS Regions, which enables sophisticated magazine-like layouts using Web standards. Adobe has also contributed a preliminary implementation of CSS Regions to the open source WebKit layout engine, which is already available in the latest builds of Chromium and the WebKit browser. Microsoft has made an implementation available in the latest preview release of Internet Explorer 10. In addition, Adobe today introduced a new proposal to the W3C, co-edited with other W3C members, called CSS Shaders that brings cinematic visual effects to HTML. Finally, Adobe announced that jQuery Mobile 1.0, a popular touch-optimized open source JavaScript framework to which Adobe is a leading contributor, was just made available as a Release Candidate (RC1) this week. Concurrent with this release will be a new version of ThemeRoller, which Adobe has rebuilt from the ground up to enable users to design custom jQuery user interface themes for tight integration in mobile Web projects.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

FAQ:

What does Nitobi do?
Nitobi is the creator and primary contributor to the open source PhoneGap framework, which allows developers to create device native mobile applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They also operate a consulting business providing development, support, and training services for PhoneGap. You can find out more at the Nitobi and PhoneGap sites.

Why is Adobe acquiring Nitobi?
Adobe is committed to enabling efficient, expressive design and development across devices. PhoneGap is a leading solution for cross-platform mobile development using web standards, and we’re excited to support PhoneGap’s growth by committing resources to the
development of the open source project. We integrated support for PhoneGap in Dreamweaver CS5.5, and with this acquisition we will also be bringing PhoneGap’s capabilities to a much broader range of new and existing Adobe customers though a paid hosted service, PhoneGap Build, which is currently in prerelease.

This investment reinforces Adobe’s commitment to helping their customers be even more expressive, regardless of the technology and is in line with recent product releases such as Adobe Edge and Adobe Muse (code name), as well as all of the innovation with community driven projects including contributions to the jQuery mobile UI framework and Webkit for layout and typography functionality.

What underlying technology will Adobe acquire?
While the PhoneGap framework continues to be open source and is being contributed to the Apache Software Foundation, PhoneGap Build incorporates additional proprietary code allowing developers to build their apps from anywhere without installing mobile platform SDKs.

Why is Nitobi donating the PhoneGap code to Apache?
Nitobi is pursuing a contribution of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to ensure open stewardship of the project over the long term. As part of that process it will be renamed to a new Apache-branded name Callback. Adobe fully supports this contribution and will continue to host the PhoneGap community site with full participation from its contributors, as well as the PhoneGap Build service.

Where do I go to get support?
Customers should go through Nitobi’s existing support channels.

Dave Johnson will be giving a talk on HTML5 and PhoneGap the Where 2.0 Conf April 19 2011 in Santa Clara.

HTML5 promises to pave the way for easy, device-neutral mobile app development. But, until HTML5 supports sophisticated cross-platform apps, developers are stuck building native apps for various mobile devices. Or are they?

In this session you’ll learn how combining HTML5 with the open source PhoneGap (www.phonegap.com) framework bridges the gap between what’s possible with HTML5 today and the engaging mobile apps developers want to build. See how HTML5 and PhoneGap work together and learn how to expose device features outside of the existing HTML5 spec, such as camera.

By learning to combine PhoneGap with HTML5, developers no longer have to commit to native development, nor do they need to wait for a mature HTML5 spec to build full-featured, cross-platform apps in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Track Dave and down to say hi or go for a beer if you have any burning PhoneGap questions:)

We’re very excited that Adobe has now announced their support for PhoneGap! The gist of is it is now you can package your apps with PhoneGap and launch the iOS and Android emulators directly from within Dreamweaver. This version of Dreamweaver also bakes in support for jQuery Mobile which is one of the most popular frameworks used inside PhoneGap. I think this is awesome! This a big move forward for Adobe embracing mobile, open standards (HTML5), the mobile web and open source!

Scott Fegette, Dreamweaver Product Manager, has the most in depth write up on it. Here’s a snipit.

For Android, the complex process of installing, configuring, and verifying the Android SDK has always been a bit of a chore. Dreamweaver CS5.5 takes all the pain out of this process by providing an “easy install” option, which will do all of the above for you in the background. Although the Apple iOS SDK tools are subject to a different licensing model (and only available on the Mac platform), once you’ve installed the Apple iOS SDK (or Xcode from the Mac App Store), you simply point Dreamweaver CS5.5 to the /Developer directory on your hard drive and you’re ready to go.

Greg Rewis senior evangelist at Adobe also has a great post on the topic and video explaining how it all works:

PhoneGap is all about making mobile app development easier and more accessible to broad audience of web developers out there do getting in bed with Dreamweaver is a great step in that direction.

One thing the Adobe folk don’t promote as much as I think they should is the fact that web developers can call native apis like camera, contacts, notifications etc from PhoneGap now within Dreamweaver. That’s at least as exciting as packaging for app stores:)

If this blog post seems a day late and a dollar short I apologize. I obviously new this functionality was coming out in Dreamweaver, but no one at Adobe told us they were launching yesterday:P Next time!

Be sure to check out the official Adobe blog post for more info on new features in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5.

PS. Please excuse their typo on the opening slide of video. It’s PhoneGap not Phone Gap. I’m sure it was just video production company who just didn’t know what’s up! :)

Bryce Curtis (aka PhoneGap super contributor) and Todd E. Kaplinger are giving a talk at the IBM Impact2011 conference this week. “TDD-1852A : Building Mobile Applications with PhoneGap”

Here’s the description:

“With mobile applications, one of the first choices is which technology direction a developer should take. Developers may choose to develop native applications, or develop browser-based applications using HTML and CSS to give an appearance similar to native devices. With native applications, the programming model and languages are not common across all devices; with browser-based applications, you can’t access all of the capabilities included on mobile devices. This is where PhoneGap comes in. PhoneGap is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. Build apps in HTML and JavaScript and still take advantage of core features in iPhone/iPod touch, iPad, Google Android, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry SDKs.”

Details:
When: Mon, 11/Apr, 05:15 PM - 06:30 PM
Where: Venetian - Marcello 4403

If you go please say hi and a big THANK YOU to Bryce from everyone at Nitobi and the PhoneGap team.

IBM’s uber friendly website won’t actually let me link to it. But if you go here and search ‘phonegap’ you’ll find it no problem.

Well you can really tell the PhoneGap community is starting to mature when a post like this comes out. Daniel Pfeiffer and the crew at Float must be really sharp guys and we’re stoked they’re using PhoneGap and sharing a bit of their knowlege. I don’t want to steal their thunder so here’s just outline of their

-Test on a device early
-Listen for ‘touchstart’ instead of ‘click’
-CSS Animations
-Optimize your JavaScript
-Try a different JavaScript library
-Concatenate and minify
-JSLint
-Update the OS
-Split up the work
-Disable the multi-tasking

Please let me know if you have any other tips to share with the rest of the PhoneGap community.

The guys over at Tiny Hippos have been kicking ass on their mobile dev emulator Ripple. It’s a Chrome Extension that helps develop PhoneGap apps by simulating data from PhoneGap APIs.

Check out this PhoneGap Geo demo in Ripple:

Can’t wait to see what this crew does next! Check out their blog post on it here.

Just caught this ComputerWorld article on New Zealand’s famous WebStock conference. Looks like one of the themes this year was HTML5 and cross platform development. Although no one from Nitobi from the PhoneGap team was there to speak it looks like Facebook’s open source guru David Recordon (@daveman692) gave PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build a nice little plug in his presentation.

“Fortunately, development environments are evolving to ease multiple builds. Facebook’s David Recordon, in a presentation centered on HTML5, spoke of PhoneGap, a service for developers to “write your app using HTML, CSS or JavaScript, upload it to the PhoneGap Build service and get back app-store ready apps for Apple iOS, Google Android, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry and more”.”

Thanks Dave! Feels nice to get a mention from person and company who’s clearly kicking ass in the mobile space!

I did just want to clear up that the name PhoneGap has nothing to the clothing chain. As was maybe implied by “The name alludes to the economical-products-for-everyone approach of the Gap clothing chain.” We’re trying to bridge the gap between native and web technologies that’s all:)

Hopefully I can head down to New Zealand and WebStock next year!

Our friends across the pond at Ribot have just had their killer movie browsing app Just One More featured by Apple as New and Noteworthy in the App Store.

You can see it featured here:

Nice work Ribot crew!

Christina Warren just posted a good high level overview of how HTML5 is addressing cross platform dev for devices.

On PhoneGap:

PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that lets developers build native apps using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. What really sets PhoneGap apart is that it lets developers create a full-functioning mobile web app but place that app in a native wrapper, so that it can use native device APIs and get submitted to the App Store or Android Market.

In essence, it enables mobile developers to create an app just as if they were targeting the mobile browser but with the benefit of being able to get into the App Store.

PhoneGap Build is a new service (still in beta) that lets developers quickly and easily create app-store ready versions of their apps for various platforms. It does all the work of compiling the code for various platforms and gives the developer a final build suitable for submission to the app market of their choice.

I don’t really consider Titanium as an HTML5 solution but it does tackle cross platform dev.