Any good books to read regarding mobile web apps (not native apps)?

Hey Joswell, not sure if this book would be up your alley, it's sort of old when considering the nature of the business. It has pretty decent tutorials and fairly layman explanations. We're using it in my Advanced Programming Seminar class, it's called "Programming with Mobile Applications" By Thomas J Duffy. It goes over Android, iOS, Win7, WebApps, and PhoneGap. It's not really a "deep dive" book, but it goes over the basics pretty well and if I remember, I got it pretty cheap off Amazon.

P.S. PhoneGap is AWESOME once you figure out how to use it. I think I may never learn to code anything but JavaScript, CSS, and HTML again!

Thanks for the tip. "I think I may never learn to code anything but JavaScript, CSS, and HTML again!" What do you mean?

PhoneGap allows you to turn your web apps into "native apps". It's more of a Ruse in a way because it's still a web app, but it's to help with that large market of people that are too good to utilize web apps on their phone.

PhoneGap has put together libraries that can turn your HTML, CSS, and JS web apps into a native app on pretty much ANY platform. iOS, Android, Windows7,8, Blackberry, etc... it's quite amazing. I just finished two projects utilizing it, and my web apps worked beautifully in my emulator/simulator for both Android and iOS while never having to write any Java or Objective-C. There's advantages and disadvantages, but I recommend investigating that for yourself. ;)

Cheers!

Wow, this is amazing! I've been watching videos on it for the past few days im very excited! Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfQ7FKtsjmU How long did it take you to learn? What kind of apps you built? Anything I can try on android or ipad?

Not sure by what you mean "how long did it take you to learn", technically I just learned it all tonight, but I've been mostly just doing web dev. Most of my projects haven't been ported mobile because I'm literally just learning it. You can check out my company website as it has my most recent portfolio, I rarely have time to update any of my sites anymore after getting a full time job. ;) www.thunder-rock.com

I'll probably be hiring people who are more specialized than I am, but I like to get my hands dirty from time to time. ;) I figure it will also help me better manage projects when I know the technology and how much of a pain it can be... cough android cough :P

PS. It IS very very exciting. Glad you are too. ;)

Thanks nice site. I see you are a web developer and businessman. Yes its good to learn slowly and hire others to develop the big tasks for clients.

Elijah Gartin do I need to know php or ror along with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to code mobile apps?

You don't HAVE to... But if you want to do anything that requires server side processing, you'll need to know it.

Generally anything that utilizes a database will need server side programming. You can learn either on this site, I still haven't gone through the PHP stuff since it's relatively new, but I recommend PHP because its more popular on the web from what I've noticed. Top content management systems utilize PHP. i.e. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc. There were also recent metrics out that I saw that PHP is faster than ROR, but I'm sure there's a certain level of circumstance. In essence I'd recommend getting familiar with PHP at the very least. And MySQL. ????

HTML,CSS, JavaScript is more front end?

I hear that RoR is better for scaling purposes.

Yes html, CSS, and js are all processed by the client machine, thus front end.

It really just boils down to the right tool for the right job. Just be sure to investigate for yourself when you find time. ;-)

Thanks