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PhoneGap

581
682
+ 1
94
Xamarin Forms

355
276
+ 1
5
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PhoneGap vs Xamarin Forms: What are the differences?

PhoneGap: Easilily create mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status; Xamarin Forms: * A complete cross-platform UI toolkit for .NET developers*. A mobile application framework for building user interfaces.It easily create native user interface layouts that can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

PhoneGap and Xamarin Forms belong to "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" category of the tech stack.

PhoneGap is an open source tool with 4.15K GitHub stars and 975 GitHub forks. Here's a link to PhoneGap's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, PhoneGap has a broader approval, being mentioned in 86 company stacks & 36 developers stacks; compared to Xamarin Forms, which is listed in 6 company stacks and 7 developer stacks.

Decisions about PhoneGap and Xamarin Forms
Aleksandr Filatov
Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft · | 2 upvotes · 106.7K views
What is Proguard?

ProGuard is the most popular optimizer for Java bytecode. It makes your Java and Android applications up to 90% smaller and up to 20% faster. ProGuard also provides minimal protection against reverse engineering by obfuscating the names of classes, fields and methods.

How to use it in Cordova app?

I didn't find any plugins for it. So I've implemented it by myself and shared it on GitHub.

Feel free to use!

See more
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Pros of PhoneGap
Pros of Xamarin Forms
  • 46
    Javascript
  • 13
    Backed by Adobe
  • 11
    Free
  • 9
    Easy and developer friendly
  • 6
    Support more platforms
  • 3
    It's javascript, html, and css
  • 2
    Common code base across all mobile platform
  • 1
    Not bound to specific framework
  • 1
    Powerful Framework
  • 1
    Runs on mobile browser
  • 1
    Similar UI across all platform
  • 0
    Free easy fast and not buggy in my experience
  • 5
    Native Development SDK with shared C# code-base

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Cons of PhoneGap
Cons of Xamarin Forms
  • 2
    Never as good as a native app
  • 1
    Created for web pages, not for complex Apps
  • 1
    Poor user experience
  • 1
    Not build for high performance
  • 1
    Hard to see
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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is PhoneGap?

    PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

    What is Xamarin Forms?

    A mobile application framework for building user interfaces.It easily create native user interface layouts that can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use PhoneGap?
    What companies use Xamarin Forms?
    See which teams inside your own company are using PhoneGap or Xamarin Forms.
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    What tools integrate with PhoneGap?
    What tools integrate with Xamarin Forms?
      No integrations found

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      What are some alternatives to PhoneGap and Xamarin Forms?
      Ionic
      Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.
      Xamarin
      Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
      Apache Cordova
      Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
      PWA
      Building a high-quality Progressive Web App has incredible benefits, making it easy to delight your users, grow engagement and increase conversions.It is intended to work on any platform that uses a standards-compliant browser.
      Sencha Touch
      Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform. Built for enabling world-class user experiences, Sencha Touch 2 is the only framework that enables developers to build fast and impressive apps that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, and more.
      See all alternatives