Among the other new products launched by Adobe under the Adobe Edge brand of tools and services is Adobe PhoneGap Build.
PhoneGap is a rather popular toolkit that allows one to develop web standard applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and then package them as native applications for a number of mobile and tablet platforms. PhoneGap was originally developed by Nitobi, however Adobe acquired Nitobi and handed over PhoneGap to Apache, which it now lives as Apache Cordova.
PhoneGap and Apache Cordova can target iOS, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Phone, Symbian and Bada; however for each platform you need its SDK, and in case of iOS you need an OS X which by extension requires you to have an Apple computer.
Nitobi, the original creators of the PhoneGap framework had launched a service that could relieve developers of the headache of installing half a dozen SDKs or maintaining multiple development environments. Their PhoneGap Build service only needed the developer to provide the code for their application, and it would compile and package applications from different platforms automatically. This service has been in beta until now; and is now one of the services available as part of Adobe Edge.
A developer can simply upload their code, or even just link it to a GitHub repository, and PhoneGap build with build it for you and provide you with the
Adobe has also simplified the packages available for the service. Those who have a paid Creative Cloud membership, can use the service for unlimited open source applications, and have unlimited collaborators; they can also have 25 private (closed source) apps, and can run up to 1000 builds a month at the rate of around 30 a day. Free users of Creative Cloud can host unlimited open source apps and have unlimited collaborators, however they are limited to 1 private application and only 100 build a month at around 3 a day.
PhoneGap Build has its own API so it can be integrated in current development environments. While you don’t need the SDKs for different platforms, in some cases you will need a developer account and a certificate to sign the built apps.
You can find out more about PhoneGap Build from the Adobe HTML website.
