Book Review: Building Android Apps with HTML, CSS, and Javascript


I've been on a Javascript kick lately in my readings.  This was the one I was REALLY excited for.  The title of this book should have been, "Developing Web Apps For Android Using jQuery U/I", but this one probably will sell more copies.

Unfortunately, the Author's grasp of modern Javascript idioms was a little lacking, so the programming examples looked like they were written for a scripting language rather than a prototypical OO language.  So, this is NOT a good book about how to create large applications on a team, or maintainable software.  Instead, this book teaches you the basics you need to get from writing web applications to writing mobile applications that support offline and many of the hardware features found in all smartphones - not just Android.  The chapter on cross-compiling to a native Android app is obviously android-specific.

On that note, it should be added that this book stresses cross-platform tools that will work just as well on Windows Phone, Apple iOS, HP WebOS, and Blackberry OS.  So, you can write your app ONCE and have it available everywhere.

This book got me really excited to sit down with a nice app project, and I believe it gave me the knowledge I need to use jQuery Mobile effectively to create mobile applications that work offline and look like native apps without the hassle of supporting multiple platforms or distributing packages.

No comments

Post a Comment