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I’ve heard the endless debates regarding how you should develop a mobile app. Should it be completely open Web, usable by all operating systems and devices, or should it be built natively to take advantage of offline time, device features, and unique properties of the OS? That debate may be over, or at least the discussion tempered, when developing mobile apps with PhoneGap. The free open source mobile framework software supports eight platforms including Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and more recently Windows Phone. PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that's designed to allow you to author native applications with HTML and JavaScript and get access to APIs and app stores. Plugins are the bridge that links the Web to native capabilities on the phone or mobile device,  says Adobe's Brian LeRoux, who spoke on "Cross Platform Mobile Web Development with Native Deployment, the Promise of PhoneGap" at the Future Insights Live conference in Las Vegas, Nev. PhoneGap currently has corporate support from Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia. Two of the most notable PhoneGap API plugins are Salesforce and Facebook, said LeRoux. If you’re just beginning your web development, LeRoux recommends building a mobile website first. When you want to add more phone functionality, you can simply add PhoneGap on top of the site. For more on getting started, check out Adobe’s site, build.phonegap.com.