Mobile Web Strategies Blog

GREAT FREE WEBSITE EMULATORS FOR TESTING HOW YOUR SITE LOOKS IN THE MOBILE The single most important thing you can do to make a website mobile-friendly is to test it on multiple smartphone and tablet platforms. Mobile Emulators lets you check how responsive and if all the functionalities it should have works well across different mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPad, Android and Blacberry without have to make the investment in all those devices. Mobile emulators are not perfect but they can help you to check the issues your website might have allowing you to take the corrective measures. Here are some great websites with emulators: 1. iPad Peek   ( http://ipadpeek.com/ ) - let you check if your website is compatible with iPad. 2. iPhone Tester ( http://iphonetester.com/ ) - A popular choice of web emulator for iPhone. Just enter the URL of your website and in real-time you can see how your site looks like on iPhone. 3. Mobile Phone Emulator ( http://www.mobilephoneemul

Do you know what is XAMARIN? If work with C# and design/build for mobile web and apps this is the tools for you. Much like PhoneGap, XAMARIN is a cross paltform tool for developers who works with C#. They also have a XAMARIN studio (like Aptana and Titanium Studio) and will make your life a lot easier. It also come with a limited free edition that can be used. Check it out...  xamarin.com

Case SharePoint 2010   Ariensco This is a SharePoint 2010 site that is built to be responsive. For desktop is fine, when you shrink the site to the tablet mode the site is responsive but the navigation disappears and instead you only have "View Navigation." From the user experience point of view, the navigation should be at reach without the user having to click on it, or at least with a JavaScript or custom CSS that when hover up the navigation bar appears.  For tablet it is a good design that it is not optimized with the user experience in mind. For tablet the design would have been optimized if the huge picture have been shrank in order to show off their navigation. When we go to mobile is even worst (you only can fully realize that when looking it from your smartphone). Mobile sites should not be picture heavy; otherwise it makes the site for a tiny screen too crowded, difficult to find our way around and battery drained.  For Ariensco example of mobile version

THE REALITY OF RESPONSIVE DESIGN TO THE MOBILE SCREEN (The mobile analysis was done based on the sites presented on  mediaqueri.es .) Here you can see how responsive design are great for some desktop and tablets but might be a bad choice to communicate what your business is and what the user can do in the tine mobile screen. Check for yourself snl.no the big picture with the search in my Nokia Lumia gets the whole screen just for search, to see the rest, what the site is about and what it offers me as a user I have to scroll down. It could be better design for mobile, but this is a good responsive design for desktop and tablets. Another one is Suffandnonsense.co.uk the image when you open is the whole screen, to see what the site is about I have to scroll down. It could be better done for mobile but it is very good for desktop and tablets. You can check for yourself on your mobile all of the sites - this is good exercise to see that pictures might speak more than a tho

Top 10 Reasons to Use HTML5 Right Now | Codrops : 'via Blog this'

This is a Slideshow RETHINKING THE MOBILE WEB by by Yiibu Author: Bryan Rieger (September 10, 2010)

I came across a very interesting website quirksmode.org in the Mobile section that explain beatifully in many parts what I believe that is the problem with mobile web design nowadays. I will be copying what I think is the most important points here. Some I might discuss but you will understand the probem when you read it. MOBILE WEB DEVELOPERS DOING THEIR JOB? The unique selling point of the web is that it runs on all devices; and not just on one platform. But it seems mobile web developers aren’t much interested in reaching out beyond one or two specific platforms. Developers should reach out to as many paltforms as humanly possible instead of confining themselves to the best ones. WHY ARE WEB DEVELOPERS INTERESTED IN MOBILE SO RELUCTANT TO VENTURE OUT BEYOUND THEIR iPHONE CONFORT ZONE? Mobile web projects for large companies are based on requirements written last year, during the height of the iPhone obsession. In addition, the iPhone’s share of mobile web traffic remains

Yes, responsive design frameworks are a good thing but it all depends on your website. Remember there is no one solution for all and if you can use a framework to make a responsive design for all it will depend if you have a content base site and if your site is not "user-specific interaction dependent". I have watched the Sitefinity webinar (embbedded below) and the tool is very useful for creating Responsive Design and even mobile that is content base such as magazines, newspapers and any other website that does not require the user to do a specifc thing on the site. The added bonus on the tool is that the user edit blocks of layout template that is not table based and their text clean out any style done by text processors - this is a tool build with the user experience in mind. However as Sitefinity presenter said himself at the end of the webinar "Responsive Design is not a complete solution..., there is still a lot of granulatity..." You can hear

Are you born mobile I have a group in LinkedIn with the same name of this blog and I got a post from one of the members from Qualcomn with this wonderful video experiment that is funny and will definitely cheer you up at the same time show you how important the mobile is in our live and that good surprises may come out of it too. "We wanted to make everyday life better with mobile, so we brought in a few surprises to a bus stop. We put up a poster featuring a URL. We waited for people to visit the mobile site. When they pressed the button, the fun began. Watch to see what happens when we created the best bus stop ever."

In my earlier post about the differences between Responsive Design and Mobile Web App I have talked about two of the three approaches for mobile web app: The second that is Responsive Design and the third that is Mobile-Specific , but what about the first? Here is the first approach that is not recommended but depending on the website, its design, its content and its purpose, it might be ok. 1. "Do nothing" approach This approach is the one which desktop content is served to the mobile device unaltered. This is unfortunately the most used approach for mobile around the world, however it is changing fast. The good side of this approach is that it is less work to do and no need to maintain, however it is not an optimal choice regarding user experience and nurturing your customers. This approach is good for lightweight pages that have flexible content and that is arrange in such a way that it is not totally zoomed out and is easy to read when tabbing twice the text.