How to build an Android based phone gap application which supports all android Version?

As all we know, the very  first purpose of development of a phone gap based application is to support as much as platforms possible using a single code base.

Though phone gap uses simple HTML, javascript and CSS, but Is it still enough to build an application which supports all android platforms. If you are using a phone KITKAT or LOLLYPOP based android phones for development, suddenly you will realize that your application  is not Jellybean and lower version. All Lists and buttons etc etc have gone Hayward.

So How to correct this problem?

Phone Gap has solve this problem in their very recent release using some crosswalk plugin. 

Makes your Cordova application use the Crosswalk WebView instead of the System WebView. Requires cordova-android 4.0 or greater.

Benefits

• WebView doesn't change depending on Android version

• Capabilities: such as WebRTC, WebAudio, Web Components

• Performance improvements (compared to older system webviews)

Drawbacks

• Increased memory footprint

• An overhead of ~30MB (as reported by the RSS column of ps)

• Increased APK size (about 17MB)

• Increased size on disk when installed (about 50MB)

• Crosswalk WebView stores data (IndexedDB, LocalStorage, etc) separately from System WebView

• You'll need to manually migrate local data when switching between the two.

Lets Start with building the  multi-platform supported application.

1. Create  two Cordova project based folder with the same project name E.g com.example.testapp this should be same in both project.
2. Add following line in config.xml file of both workspaces
1. <preference name='phonegap-version' value='cli-5.1.1'/>
3. Install the following plugin in the cordova project folder in which you want to build the Lower version support.
4. To install the plugin execute  follow the steps.
1. Using Cmd go to your Cordova project folder 
2. $ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-crosswalk-webview 
5.  Define the minimum and maximum sdk support version in config.xml file of both application. Search for android platform add the bold text in required workspace
6. For Higher version supported Apk

   <platform name="android">
       <preference name="AndroidLaunchMode" value="singleTop"/>
       <preference name="android-minSdkVersion" value="19" />
       <icon src="res/android/xhdpi.png" />
       <icon src="res/android/ldpi.png" density="ldpi" />
       <icon src="res/android/mdpi.png" density="mdpi" />
       <icon src="res/android/hdpi.png" density="hdpi" />
       <icon src="res/android/xhdpi.png" density="xhdpi" />
   </platform>

7. For Lower Version supported Apk

   <platform name="android">
       <preference name="AndroidLaunchMode" value="singleTop"/>
       <preference name="android-minSdkVersion" value="10" />

       <preference name="android-maxSdkVersion" value="19" />
       <icon src="res/android/xhdpi.png" />
       <icon src="res/android/ldpi.png" density="ldpi" />
       <icon src="res/android/mdpi.png" density="mdpi" />
       <icon src="res/android/hdpi.png" density="hdpi" />
       <icon src="res/android/xhdpi.png" density="xhdpi" />
   </platform>

8. Now Build a release version this application. Use the following link
9. Build a Phone gap android App deployable into google play store
10. Now deploy your both application with same version E.g. 0.0.2

    For more details help please follow the links given below  

http://developer.android.com/google/play/publishing/multiple-apks.html

https://github.com/crosswalk-project/cordova-plugin-crosswalk-webview


Please write a comment below and mail me If you have any issues regarding this