Web Development for Mobile Devices

Motorola DynaTAC 8000x

  LED display
  30 min. talk time

Only $3995.00

May 29, 2010 NC State University

Motorola DynaTAC 8000x

  LED display
  30 min. talk time

Only $3995.00 $8723.67


  4.2B mobile devices vs. 1.3B PCs
  ~840M MD internet enabled
  2009 the NA web share rose 110%,
148% globally
  Forecast is 1.7B mobile web users
by 2013

The main or only access for many

Statistics from Vint Cerf, WWW 2010 and Quantcast.


Many reasons contribute to the increase in use of
mobile devices on the Internet.
  Faster, better connectivity
  Better data plans
  Devices with larger, color displays
  Touch screens
  Better browsers (Webkit, Mozilla, Opera)
  Software designed specifically for MDs


  Small, variable screen size and resolution
  Input is awkward
  Selection of items is often difficult
  Networks, even 3G, are slow and may cost
  Flash is white space
  Looking for a small amount of information


  Use CSS for layout, not tables.
  Put important information near the top.
  Use images sparingly and make sure they are
optimized.
  Less is more.
  Use links like breadcrumbs to navigate your
site.


  Meet the user need quickly
  Input is awkward, make it easy
  Show only essential information
  Breadcrumb trails vs. navigation
  Mobile friendly page layout
  Single column (Google, Yahoo, FB, Twitter)
  Clearly distinguish selected items
  Large icons for buttons
  Consistent layout
Acknowledgements: Abid Warsi, webcredible.co.uk (Oct. 2007), et al


With smarter, better, mobile browsers is there a
reason to develop mobile sites?

Increase usability for the mobile user.

Mobile users were successful 64% of the time on
mobile sites compared to a 53% success rate for
standard websites (Jakob Nielsen, 2009).



Take advantage of specific capabilities of MDs, for
example:
- telephone
- navigation / location based services
- camera



A lot of the world only has access to the web via a
mobile device. Is your target audience or is a
new audience within this group?



Is location-sensitivity important to you? Are you
able to provide content or services that users
need “in the field?”


  Make your current site mobile friendly
  Provide different functionality for MDs vs. PCs
  Create a site specific to MDs


  Don’t reinvent the wheel
  Libraries to detect if and what type MD

  View source

  Initial testing in Safari, final testing on device
or http://www.opera.com/mobile/demo/


  Principles of design for a mobile site are quite a
bit different than for a traditional web site.

  Simplify - Some sites can be made mobile
friendly with logical, semantic markup, a
different style sheet, and fluid design.

  You might decide you need to design a mobile
site to utilize a specific functionality of the
device.

  With the explosion in usage of touch screen
phones and the iPad it becomes increasingly
harder to decide how to display content.

  The mobile market is growing rapidly, so if
possible, offer a choice.


  MobiForge.com (ready.mobi – validator)
  Tips on Designing and Developing Mobile
Web http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2055
  MIT Code:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/
mitmobileweb/
  Opera mini emulator:
http://www.opera.com/mobile/demo/


http://m.ces.ncsu.edu


Web Development for Mobile Devices

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