Mobile Development Tips: Building Mobile Apps for Digital Libraries
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This document provides tips for building mobile apps for digital libraries. It discusses native apps versus browser apps, and how to focus on core user actions and understand your audience when developing for mobile. It recommends learning from successful mobile designs, optimizing for speed and a touch interface, and following mobile design conventions. The document also provides resources for getting started in mobile development.
Mobile Development Tips: Building Mobile Apps for Digital Libraries
- 1. Mobile Development Tips: Building Mobile Apps for Digital Libraries Handheld Librarian III July 28, 2010 Jason A. Clark Head of Digital Access and Web Services Montana State University Libraries
- 2. A Look Ahead... Native Apps versus Browser Apps A Conversion Story Mobile Development Tips Getting Started
- 3. Native Apps Installed on the iPhone or Device Access to the hardware (speakers, accelerometer, camera, etc.) Written with Objective-C (Apple) "App Store" or Proprietary Distribution
- 4. Browser (Mobile) Apps Web site that is specifically optimized for the iPhone or mobile device Built with standard web technologies Available at a URL Speedy debugging and development
- 5. Browser v. Native
- 6. A live mobile web app... Demos: Terra - lifeonterra.com Terra mobile - lifeonterra.com/m/ Download: Mobile template - www.lib.montana.edu/~jason/files/m/ Explanation & blog post - http://wp.me/p8yR-1J Code Samples: http://www.lib.montana.edu/~jason/files.php
- 7. A live mobile web app... Terra - lifeonterra.com becomes Terra mobile - lifeonterra.com/m/
- 10. Making the Move to Mobile...
- 12. Narrow your Focus Do a few things really well What are the core actions?
- 13. Know your Audience Run the Analytics Research for Mobile Browser Types
- 14. Learn from the Masters View Source -> m.flickr.com "Be Mobile" with User Agent Switcher https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59/
- 15. Study the Interface & Device Scalable Design, Think Percentages 320px AND 480px Tactile navigation touch, pinch, spread, flick, spin (gyrometer) Apple recommends a minimum target size: 29px wide 44px tall
- 16. Speed FTW, Performance First Limit Images and Markup "Minify" your scripts and CSS JSLint, CleanCSS Take Advantage of HTML5, CSS3
- 17. Respect the URL Follow the "m" convention m.delicious.com OR lifeonterra.com/m/ Keep Categories (directories) Short It's a touch environment, not a typing environment.
- 18. Mobile Browsers = Cutting Edge WebKit Browser Engine Supports many HTML5 and CSS3 features Native app functionality geolocation offline storage web workers
- 19. Know Mobile Design Conventions One Column Layout Whitespace is Your Friend Embrace an Economy of Language "Quick Visit" Architecture
- 20. Getting Started, Learning More Don't Ignore Frameworks and Libraries jQtouch, iUI, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap Google App Inventor http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/ Mobile Web Apps - Apple http://developer.apple.com/safari/ Mobile Web App Design: Getting Started Michael Doran, Code4Lib 2010 http://code4lib.org/conference/2010/doran
- 21. Mobile Development in Libraries Chad Haefele, Mobile Site Generator http://www.hiddenpeanuts.com/msg/ Jason Casden, WolfWalk at NCSU http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/wolfwalk/ Laurie Bridges and Kim Griggs http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/jspui/handle/1957/16437
- 22. Mobile First as Strategy Google programmers are doing work on mobile applications first, because they are better apps and that's what top programmers want to develop. - Eric Schmidt, Google CEO http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/Google-CEO-Eric-Schmidt-at-MWC-Mobile-First-694942/
- 23. Mobile Screen Resolutions Android (Motorola Droid) 480x854 Android (MyTouch) 320x480 Android (Nexus One) 480x800 Apple iPhone 320x480 Apple iPad 1024x768 Palm Pre 320 x 480 Source: http://insideria.com/2010/05/building-web-sites-optimized-f.html
- 24. Contact Information Jason A. Clark Head of Digital Access and Web Services Montana State University Libraries jaclark@montana.edu twitter.com/jaclark www.jasonclark.info