Is Phonegap good for building responsive UI?

Question

I am aware that Phonegap's code is based on HTML,CSS,Javascript and its favorable to me since i am a web developer. I look on Phonegaps documentation and some things are still not clear to me.

Now i want to create an app that will be deployed in many platforms including web browser. A simple app with basic CRUD (create,read,update,delete) functionality and i want the UI to be responsive.

Now i am worried if there will be no compatibility issues when displaying the html/css design i created with bootstrap.

Anyone been using well with phonegap + bootstrap? Can you clear this worries for me?

Answer 1

I have been developing a phonegap/cordova app (for Android) and find it to be quite reasonable in terms of speed. Some recommendations from my experience and experimentations;

1. Avoid jQuery mobile, as it becomes painfully slow in phonegap.
2. Use the latest versions of phonegap/cordova. I struggled with an issue I was having and wasted many hours, only to discover it was specific to phonegap 2.7. Upgrading to 3.3 resolved it.
3. Another benefit of using v3+ is the plugin system - although a little tedious to setup at first, it enables you to specify exactly what sections of cordova/phonegap will be included in the app, making it more lightweight and quicker to initialise.
4. Avoid CSS animations or overly complex CSS.
5. Use lighter libraries and frameworks wherever possible.

I have been using bootstrap 3 for my interface and am happy with it, and it's certainly much faster than my previous attempt using jQuery mobile.

There are also a number of guides online to give performance tips when developing for phonegap such as this one, I recommend reading prior to getting started.

Hope this helps :)