Mobile Web Strategies Blog

Today I am sharing a slideshare presentation of the Norwegian designer Ida Aalen because many of the topics she speaks on her presentation I have already been talking of the last months on other articles of this same blog. Topics such as: 1. User-centered design and that whoever shout the most win and it is often the user. 2. Mobile first and that design for mobile should come first. (See earlier articles on this subject in this same blog). I specially like her analogy when she mention the book Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski " If it's not important enough to put on mobile, is it important to put on the desktop?" 3. Responsive Design and that browser landscape becomes bigger and smaller at the same time with same content on all platforms and the need for adaptative presentation that are future-friendly. From the book on Responsive Design by Ethan Marcotte. I highly recommend Ida's presentation and to make it easy to see I am making it very user-friendly and embe...

HTML5 MISCONCEPTION Nowadays any new browser capability or web application technique found across the web is labeled as HTML5 and that is not true. Michael Mahemoff said that HTML5 has become a brand that represents a new type of web application rather than the specification itself. In order to learn HTML5 is very important to understand what really HTML5 is. It is common nowadays hear CSS transitions, web sockets, geolocation, SVG, CSS @font-face all mentioned under the HTML5 banner and label all under HTML5 "brand".  In the specification none of those mentioned are found for the simple reason that they either belong to the CSS3 specification or other API specification within the WWW Consortium. Websites are and will be built with a combination of HTML5, next-generation APIs, JavaScript and CSS3, which means that as a designer or developer the difference between those technologies must be clear and how they fit together should be understood. What is really HTML5? ...

Lessons To Be Learned From Facebook Mobile User Growth To 54% From Last Year Today one of the headlines in the -> Online Media Daily was that advertisement on Facebook social network's mobile business rose to 30% of its sales this year compared to almost nothing last year which was responsible for the 39% overall raise of Facebook revenues . The lesson to be learned here is clear MOBILE USE is rising significantly and Facebook knows that because their monthly active mobile users is 751 million in the end of March. What that means? It means that Facebook mobile monthly active users have grew 54% from last year. Let's compare a bit The numbers above show how mobile users has double this year compared to the last one, but the same Facebook has announced that their monthly active users grew 23% compared to last year. This is  a real bomb news for the Mobile World It means that mobile is growing so fast that any company that try to blind itself...

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.mobilephone...

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 ...

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. ...

Why the mobile web vs. apps debate is a false dichotomy The arguments presented in favor of the mobile web over mobile native represent a false dichotomy. Simply put, there is no universal truth in the mobile web vs. mobile native debate, and no “one right way,” despite what the pontificators would have you believe. The argument in favor of mobile web goes like this: The web is open, ubiquitous, requires no special software, is globally searchable and algorithmically discoverable. As such, it is agile, extensible and readily manageable. Plus, there are lots of proven models for development, discovery, distribution and monetization. And, of course, mobile web development offers a higher degree of symmetry to PC browser-based web development than mobile native app development does. The argument is favor of mobile native goes like this: There are over 400 million iOS devices and over 500 million Android devices, representing almost 1 billion devices worldw...

Smartphone is a mobile device in which people does not have time or are in the environment that is suitable to input anything. This means the more you facilitate your customers to do what he or she has to do on your mobile Web site the more they will come for more, stick with your company and even recommend your company for the easy of use even when mobile. What is the user experience you provide for your customers on your mobile Web? If you use responsive design, what do you consider when building the Smarthphone version? Do you ask your customers what they need and what when using the Smartphone or you do what you think is best without considering the users who will be using the site? without considering their environment conditions and what they really would like to use your site for when mobile?

RESPONSIVE DESIGN is a way to make the same desktop website change through different CSS stylesheets. The HTML site is nothing more than text wrapped within tags that has no style whatsoever.  When we include some meta tags within the head in the HTML document that limits the range of sizes recognized for tablets and for smartphone applying for both different CSS stylesheet built for specific for tables and for smartphones.  Responsive Design is of the 3 Mobile Web Development strategies that is appropriated for semantic markup that use stylesheets and script to define appearance such as images, layout, etc. It is not appropriated for all websites, products or companies. MOBILE WEB APP or MOBILE-SPECIFC approach is the one which mobile-specific content is built and delivered to mobile devices (both tablets and/or smartphones). This approach is the third of the 3 mobile content approaches and usually involves some kind of server-side detection and redirection. Mobile-specifi...

Go mobile means serve a mobile user who has different needs using mobile devices than the user accessing a Web page from the desktop. According to Cisco: “By the end of 2013, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth, and by 2017 there will be nearly 1.4 mobile devices per capita. There will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2017, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules-exceeding the world's population at that time (7.6 billion).” http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-520862.html Why companies should go mobile? 1. There are already too much mobile devices out there to you ignore its existence; 2. Your competitor already are opening their eyes for the opportunity to server their customers though mobile devices; and 3. Unless you want to lose your customers for lack of mobility - you must go Mobile.