Web Development for Mobile Devices

NETC 2010 – Auburn

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


Technology

Web Development for Mobile Devices