I’ve got two apps on the go using Phonegap, and this is just a quick post to say that I can highly recommend the mobile web as a development platform. My list of tools / libraries that I use:

  • Capt for building the project and compiling / watching intermediate languages
  • LESS.js for css
  • Coffeescript
  • Backbone.js
  • Underscore.js
  • My responsive map/reduce underscore.js helpers (yet to be released)
  • Leaflet for touch-based maps that are GPU accelerated
  • JSON.js from douglas crockford
  • jQuery, although I may move to using zepto later on
  • Phonegap for deploying to Android and iPhone
  • Makefile for packaging and bundling
  • Jasmine for speccing
  • Latlon.js for distance and bearing functions
  • iScroll.js for fixed position headers and footers
  • Cross-origin ajax requests to allow local development while accessing remote servers
  • ECO templates by Sam Stephenson for in-app rendering
  • JST templates from underscore.js for static html

It’s a pretty nice toolkit. I need to do some more work on capt and put up a sample app so that other people can use my toolkit, but yeah, coffeescript, backbone and less.js are a great way to build mobile apps.