Comments on: Podcast 47: The mobile web

By: dress up games

dress up games — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:28:23 +0000

thanks...

By: Pirkka Rannikko

Pirkka Rannikko — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:26:43 +0000

Hi! I did listen this podcast just a couple of days ago and found it very interesting because I have been tackling with mobile output of websites lately. I would like to share some of my thoughts about mobile websites to ease up my mind :) (Although people seemed to be more interested in the Mac question). Don't get bored. I live in Finland and just this year service providers got the permission to sell mobile phones along with phone deals just like in the UK for years. Before it was illegal to do this and you had to buy your device separetly from the deal. (Hope you understand :) Because of this 3G phone sales have increased rapidly and atleast I have high hopes that mobile browsing will come more popular. Tarifs are still too high unless you take some kind of data deal (I have a 384 kbs connection and it costs 30 € a month in comparison to my 2048 kbs broadband connection which costs 36 € per month). As more and more people are getting these it comes important to think if your website needs an out put for mobile devices. But like you said in the podcast the time isn't probably right to invest a lot of time and money to this unless it's critical to your business. The browser differences are too big to ensure a website design that would look as supposed on every device. I've come to the conclusion that it is best to design with standards and hope that the different browsers show your site atleast in an understandable way. I hate this as like my sites to render the same way in every browser but it just isn't possible. Ofcourse you must test your site with different mobile devices and browsers but this could be more easily said than done. For starters who owns or can access more than one or two mobile devices for test purposes. Your friends will hate you if you are always after their phones and the cost will be high if you are planning to buy several 3G or highend phones (which people are using for browsing if any). There are some emulators from different companies but it just isn't the same. As you said there are about 160 different devices and over 40 browsers to begin with :) Some browsershave Flash players, JavaScript, Cookies and CSS support or some combination of these. Usually the execution of these features is lacking so you can't really trust anything just hope. Some are plain XHTML browsers showing nothing but the fact if you have designed your site well with standards or poorly. There are also those browsers (Opera Mini) that strip elements away and transform your site's out put to fit the small screen. The horrors of the designer :) The Opera 9 is a very good tool for developing mobile sites because it can emulate a small screen browser. Ofcourse it has an outstanding CSS support compared to actual mobile browsers so it tells you the truth very positively. In Finland we are big Nokia enthusiasts and some of the new genaration S60 (like N73) devices have a browser which shows web sites just like desktop browsers. Even if you provide an alternative CSS stylesheet using the media="handheld" atribute. It is absolutely horrible to browse a site with 240x320 px screen which is designed to computer screens. I don't know what the engineers at Nokia have thought when dropping this standard. In theory life of the designer would be more easy if you just could provide two stylesheets in this way. Well the browser supports JavaScript and Cookies so I got an idea (after reading some A List Apart) why not to allow users to change the whole stylesheet on the fly by clicking a button or link. I begged my friend to write this script and it actually works. The Nokia users (and other not getting the mobile stylesheet the normal way by defining the media atribute for CSS links) can now view the site in a more convenient way if they choose so. Ofcourse it is a whole different thing to teach people to use this kind of feature. The other thing with this is that if you design you mobile stylesheet in a flexible way not only the mobile users can benefit from it. Users having probles accessing the site for example due to poor sight can use also this alternative browsing view for better accessibility because it works also when using a desktop computer. I think it would be unreasonable to use this much work and effort for just for one mobile browser. Unless if you are getting paid for it ;P The script uses JavaScript (we used the Prototype library to ease up the work) and Cookies so its not a perfect solution and needs a lot of developement still. Anyway it is nice to develope and learn something new and geeting your satisfaction from it. Sorry for writing this novel but I had to purge my mind and share this idea with others. The script is running on two different sites: http://www.bf-engineering.fi (It is in Finnish so beware but you can find the magic button from the the top left of the browser view.) http://www.avecmobile.com (This site was updated just yesterday and some history payload needs to be corrected still. The site is running on Typo3 CMS. Magic link is in the left navigation bar.) A couple of links for the mobile web designer: http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-mobile-bp-20051017/ http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/7f3f1424-b51e-4067-a3ef-acaab08e484f/XHTML_Guidelines_For_Creating_Web_Content_v1_3_en.pdf.html http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/1e66bc62-0a3e-4e36-b8c9-4e20e8b8cdd8/Overview_of_AJAX_Support_in_Nokia_Web_Browser_v1_0_en.pdf.html

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:09:04 +0000

Paul recommends another book in this episode, a designer's introduction to javascript - does anyone know where I can get this book from?

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:56:46 +0000

Great show, I have just discovered BoagWorld recently and am slowly catching up.
I agree with your MAC reasoning. The MAC users are dying a slow and horrible death, but it isn’t too far off in the future.
Also, with all the phonebrowser talk, why isn’t there and example of BoagWorld in a phone format…muhahahahaha!
Last but not least do you have recommendations to see what type of formatting works best in small format.
Like should we use tables or not, since CSS sounds out for now, what will work. A great link would be helpful.
Thanks for the great show!!!!
Ron

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:50:27 +0000

Mobile web:
I live in South Africa where broadband is still mostly for the fairly wealthy. People with dial-up also can’t really afford to surf the internet either.
I am creating a mobile site for my scout troop so that our scouts can access calendar details etc from their cellphones whenever they have the need.
Our cost is R2/mb of data and with no graphics on the site, it’s not really a viable commercial exercise in terms of branding, but by giving the user information that they want quickly will make people have a “better online experience”.
It should also work well in South Africa because I definitely believe that way more people here have cellphones than computers that can connect to the web.
“Poorer” countries (in my opinion) will embrace the mobile web faster than the “richer” countries, because in the UK or USA you cud probably just pull out your laptop and connect through wi-fi whenever you want to.
Here you can’t. Perhaps you don’t own a laptop, or there is no real wi-fi infrastructure. That’s why people here (especially the teens) are far more clued up on cellphone capabilities – because they are less likely to have a computer and therefore spend more time using the internet/chat rooms etc on their cellphones.
Time will tell though.

By: Derek

Derek — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:21:45 +0000

The problem with including images as attachments in your email is that it’s a HUGE increase in size and bandwidth and can be particularly annoying to lower bandwidth users who need to wait to download images when popping mail.
I’ve always thought linking works, but PDF is universal, an attached PDF will be guaranteed to be viewable across every platform with PDF viewers. Of course this adds to size as well.
-D

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 09:09:44 +0000

Oh its so easy! lol

By: Richard (Pasty Man) Quick

Richard (Pasty Man) Quick — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:55:18 +0000

I doubt you need a mac to test it on, since most users use Opera or Firefox on Macs.”
Where did you get that from?
I’d say most Mac users use Safari. That’s based on persoanl experience not hard stats, but I’d be interested if you’ve got stats otherwise.
BTW – Firefox on the Mac doesn’t render 100% the same as on the PC. Font sizes and margins can vary. It’s close – but not 100%.
Much more than someone who is visually impaired visiting your site once in a million years. Worrying about that long shot
That’s totally different. It’s a human rights issue.
If you decide to support Safari on a Mac or not that’s a business decision which you’re entitled to make.
You’re not entitled to make a decision as to whether a disabled person is able to access your site.
You’ve got a legal and moral responsibility to make reasonable efforts to ensure your site’s accessible to people with disabilties.
Besides – if you’re using web standards your site will pretty much be bascially accessible with minimal effort – and if you’re not then you shouldn’t be entitled to call yourself a professional web designer (not my idea).

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:11:38 +0000

Hi
Was irritated to hear Paul suggesting testing for a mac wasn’t worth the effort, you need to read more. With virus free macs, the ipod, the strength of products/stores/stocks coming from Apple, you should be thinking about it. Much more than someone who is visually impaired visiting your site once in a million years. Worrying about that long shot
Next, the comment print designers can’t do the web. That was the kicker, you are once again misinformed. Web designers can’t do print. Know nothing about resolution, colour spaces, trapping, RIP’s, and a million other details that make up a proper print job. When you mentioned simply making a ‘page look pretty’, you indicated how little you know outside of only what you do.
In closing, if I understand Paul’s role correctly, he is purely a designer for Headscape? Not able to develop/program. I would suggest before you disregard the skills of a print professional as only someone who makes a ‘page look pretty’, you should spend more time at least developing the skills required for what you are currently doing. Designing is only a small part of web development….making a page look pretty is only a small part of print.
My 2bits.
tj

By: Marcus

Marcus — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 20:01:38 +0000

"Macs are dead," depends on your market actually, I ran a couple sites one I got about 20% mac users, anther I got about 5%. I doubt you need a mac to test it on, since most users use Opera or Firefox on Macs.