phonegap34-wp81-notes.md

Notes: PhoneGap/Cordova, Visual Studio 2013 Update 2, and Windows Phone 8.1

Based on observations made with PhoneGap/Cordova 3.4, Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 (RTM), and Windows Phone 8.1.

• Projects generated via the PhoneGap or the Cordova CLI can run (unmodified) in emulators for Windows Phone 8.0 and Windows Phone 8.1
  • MSDN: App Platform Compability for Windows Phone 8
• Windows Phone 8.0 projects must be re-targeted to Windows Phone 8.1 for script debugging within the Windows Phone 8.1 emulator
  • Blog Post: JavaScript/Native Interop Debugging in Visual Studio 2013
• Projects generated via the PhoneGap or the Cordova CLI that are re-targeted to Windows Phone 8.1 are converted to Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 projects
  • Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 projects do not support script debugging in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2
• Projects generated via the PhoneGap or the Cordova CLI that are re-targeted to Windows Phone 8.1 compile and run, but throw an exception
  • PhoneGap/Cordova for Windows Phone uses the (old) Microsoft.Phone.Controls.WebBrowser control
  • Browser control cannot load browser decorators (i.e. WPCordovaClassLib.CordovaLib.XHRHelper) due to System.SystemException thrown for WebBrowser.InvokeScript()
• Windows Phone 8.1 features the (new) Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.WebView
  • Blog Post: What's New in WebView in Windows 8.1
  • Video: WebView: Bringing the Web to Your App
• Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 features a project type, WebView App (Windows Phone)
  • Serves as a good starting point for future PhoneGap/Cordova development for Windows Phone 8.1
  • Pros: Integrated WebView into XAML display tree, support for navigation to local content, as well as navigation, content, script events, InvokeScriptAsync and ScriptNotify are "baked" into the WebView

Thanks for sharing this John.
I have addressed CLI retarget to 8.1 issues.
https://gist.github.com/purplecabbage/10840b68143305ac0048
apache/cordova-wp8@18ec1c3