What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to Mobile Web ArcGIS Development, covers some of the core elements of developing mobile ArcGIS applications. We discuss how mobile web development is different from traditional web development. These differences include screen size, user interaction, design, functionality, and user and performance considerations. Mobile browsers and different development frameworks are also considered in this chapter.

Chapter 2, Understanding Mobile Frameworks and APIs, discusses some of the basic tools that are used for mobile web development; this includes popular frameworks and design paradigms. Dojo and jQuery mobile are both covered. In addition, simple code examples are included. We finish the chapter with an introduction to responsive, multi-device design and the Geolocation API.

Chapter 3, Building Your First Mobile ArcGIS Application, covers coding using the ArcGIS API. We introduce key tools, including Chrome's DevTools and the local web server installation. Starting with a brief review of basic coding elements, including HTML5, CSS3, and viewport, the bulk of this chapter walks you through code. We move from a very basic ArcGIS mobile application and evolve this code to include an ArcGIS map layer overlay and zooming to a users current location using geolocation.

Chapter 4, Advancing the Basic Mobile ArcGIS Application, is a natural progression from the previous chapter. We advance our mobile ArcGIS knowledge by adding more advanced functionality to our base application. This includes adding popular tools such as feature popups, a legend, finding features, and address search. At the completion of this chapter, you will have progressed from a basic to a more advanced understanding of ArcGIS mobile web development.

Chapter 5, Providing Cross-device Support with Responsive Design, Shows how to build mobile ArcGIS applications which run on all mobile devices. Here we introduce the idea of responsive design using the popular Bootstrap framework. We start with some of the key concepts, then start coding. We not only walk through the development of cross-device ArcGIS web applications with Bootstrap, but also evolve the base application to include a number of popular tools.

Chapter 6, Integration with ArcGIS Online, will focus on ArcGIS Online webmaps. So far, we worked with individual ArcGIS published services. Here, we will build a mobile ArcGIS application that works directly with ArcGIS Online. The application that we evolve in this chapter will include authentication and a webmap list and it will load a user-selected webmap.

Chapter 7, Developing Hybrid ArcGIS Mobile Applications with PhoneGap, demonstrates the flexibility of building mobile applications with the ArcGIS JavaScript API. We can not only build mobile applications that run in browsers, but also convert these applications to hybrid or installable apps that can be distributed to the various mobile app stores. In this chapter, we will provide guidance on working with PhoneGap and Cordova. We will not only go through setup, but also build a basic ArcGIS hybrid mobile application.