It was about two weeks back when Kraig Lewis of packtpub reached out to me do a review of the new book on phone gap they have published – PhoneGap 2.x Mobile Application Development by Kerri Shotts. I was not sure if I could do justice to the book because from the title it seemed like a book targeted to developers creating mobile applications, and I have never been one. In my current product management role, I have been part of teams creating some really cool apps for iPads, but again I haven’t been the developer on the team and in my earlier days I was more of a C++ guy. So, I reached out to Kraig to understand if they would be ok with me doing a first impression rather than an in-depth review given my background and they were more than happy to accommodate that. So, here we go…
My first impression going through some of the initial material is that book has a nice structure in place. It takes you the through the journey of PhoneGap framework with the examples and some of them you can actually use in your projects, so that a plus. The book also covers both iOS and Android which is another plus. On the flip side you do need to some programming background to get the best out of it. It is more focused on leveraging PhoneGap framework than teaching mobile app development, which is also pretty evident from the title itself. Overall, I would say that this book will be a value add to your ebook shelf, if you are in the field of mobile app development.