Formulating of Smart Phone Application using HTML5 based Cross Platform Framework

The mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smart phones are too diverse such as Google's Android, Apple's iOS, Microsoft's Windows Phone, and so on. Smart phone application development is done using native platform such as iPhone using Objective-C, Android using Java, Windows Mobile using C# and so on. Therefore, a cross-platform framework which supports 'Write once and deploy everywhere' is required to support the development of smart phone applications. This paper presents the HTML5-based cross platform framework which uses PhoneGap and Webkit to support the development of smart phone applications that are written as Web applications. This paper investigates the benefits and drawbacks of cross-platform mobile app development by developing a smart phone app using the PhoneGap framework. A web based thesis app is created for use on Android, iPhone and Windows Phone smart phones. The implementation of the app is based on a single codebase of the standard web development technologies - HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The application supports Android version 2.2 or later and for iOS version 4.2.1 or later is accepted. On Windows Phone the application is designed to be operational from version. The compatibility of the application on any tablets is not tested. The result will reveal problems that may encounter and notable issues that one must take in consideration when using the software development method of cross-platform.