there are a bunch of Cordova Tools: A diverse ecosystem of command line tools, JavaScript frameworks, and cloud services exist that augment Cordova
at the developer-site there are a lot of Frameworks & SDKs covering Apache Cordova
Visual Studio
Onsen UI
Monaca
Ionic
Adobe PhoneGap
GapDebug
App Builder
Cocoon
Evothings Studio
NSB/AppStudio
the following both are open surce:
Telerik
Telerik Platform is a complete mobile app development platform for developing hybrid and native apps with JavaScript. Use our free and open source Kendo UI framework with Telerik Platform to address every stage of your application lifecycle - from idea…
Framework7
Framework7 is a free and open source mobile HTML framework for developing hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS & Android native look and feel.
I used the technology extensively in its earliest incarnation when it was Apache Phonegap (not Adobe Phonegap but the forerunner to the current Cordova), so can only offer some opinion and possibly insight about its basic architecture which probably hasn’t changed although there may be new developments I’m not aware of.
It’s very cool, always has been from day one.
It’s a great way to write a universally deployable graphical app on a single, common codebase.
The app you write can also be deployed flexibly, both from a web server or installed locally on a target machine.
If installed locally, you will want to understand the special html/javascript environment, which is a bit different than running in a web browser.
You code using the web languages of today, HTML5/Javascript/CSS, so the tools you will want to consider are part of those ecologies and extend far, far beyond the simple list of IDEs you posted.
Actually, when you’re talking about frameworks, HTML is not generally considered a framework, but you can utilize many HTML based frameworks like JQuery. You can also implement frameworks that target specific targets like mobile devices (eg JQuery Mobile).
The downside is that the cross-platform components of the technology does not perform as well as natively compiled applications. But, for many apps this does not matter because the backend might be written separately from the frontend or the app just doesn’t require that kind of performance.
Probably the biggest competitor as a cross-platform UI is Qt.
Add Tizen to your list of building apps using this technology with major sponsorship support (and is free).
For some, it may be important that you can’t hide your code, code must always be completely accessible and in a form that can be read by whatever is used to render your code. You can obfuscate, but that can usually be reverse-engineered easily.
In general,
I’d recommend an IDE only if you are working in a team, an IDE will actually get in your way if you are an individual Developer. Instead, use a plain text editor and templates, and if you use an enhanced text editor like any of the ones in the OSS (except xterm) then you will get HTML syntax highlighting.
Depending on how you may wish to deploy and if you want to use any offered services, you can consider an online IDE. Can’t remember what I was using long ago, but it was eventually bought by IBM. Might be what is now called MobileFirst Platform.
I know people who used to work for Telerik, it’s also very cool but costs.
Unless you are coding a complex application, I highly recommend you create what is called a Single Page Application where all the code for your entire application is deployable as a single HTML page. Note that this does not mean that the User can only see a single page, quite the contrary… From your single HTML page you can define multiple pages.
Although it’s been a few years since I wrote this code heavily, you can PM me if you have specific questions about anything you might not feel proper for a Public forum.