The PhoneGap/Cordova misconception

2 years ago I was in the hotel I'm in right now and PhoneGap for WP7 was born.

In the time since it's come a long way--due to the work of a few very smart people.
I haven't done a lot with PhoneGap/Cordova for a while nor talked/blogged about it. Fortunately those other people have.

There is, however, something that many people still seem confused about and I'd like to try and clear it up now. The confusion is that the impression that the architecture diagram of a multi-platform PG/C app should look something like this.

The assumption is that because the UI for each version of the app will be written in HTML, CSS & JavaScript they should all be the same.

THIS IS WRONG!
That was never the intention.


For each version of the app that is built, it should have a UI that is appropriate to and targets the platform it will run on. The above diagram should actually look something like this.

PG/C allows you to create native apps with "web" technologies. It doesn't mean you should create an app that looks the same on each platform.

If you're building apps with PG/C then please keep this in mind.