Mobile Web

Over at mBricks my colleagues have put a lot of work into the device database (we work with WURFL data and contribute back as well as we can). I took the opportunity to take a closer look at screen size trends. The data I have covers about 400 different device models sold from 2005 to today.

The Apple iPhone is easily the most publicized new mobile device in recent memory. But despite all the discussion about the product, there's relatively little hard information available to the public on its impact. How is it being used? What effect is it having on customers and on the technology industry?

The modern web is viewed on many different devices, so it is getting increasingly important for us to think about how to create our web sites so that they will serve the right content to users, no matter what device they are using. We have many technologies at our disposal, including media types, media queries, and browser sniffing, but what's the best way to handle this?

Too often, when companies decide to make a mobile version of their application, they take their desktop application or site, decide which features work for mobile, and then convert those features to a mobile language or two. Through this method we get flight times, stock prices, checking email, checking calendars, local weather, and several other useful but limited applications. These applications do not fully meet user needs. To do anything in particular, the user has to visit several applications, one after the other, remembering data from application to application.

MY MOBILER v1.23 (05/20/2008) - FREEWARE * View your mobile screen on your desktop. * Control your mobile by using desktop keyboard and mouse. * Copy/Cut/Paste text between mobile and desktop. * Capture mobile screen. * Drag and drop files to your mobile. * Support ActiveSync / IP Connection * Support Mobile Explorer (File Browse)

My earlier post about the mobile Text Input Field was met with quite a bit of interest. A little surprising perhaps, since it's a somewhat mundane problem area. But understandable, because its so important to get right. So, to complement it, here is an input control for bound numerical data. Multifield The little brother of the text input field is the Multi-field editor. While the Text input field is suitable for general free form text and numbers, it is not ideal for structured data like dates, time, monetary values, number ranges, etc.

This document specifies Best Practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices. The principal objective is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices. The recommendations refer to delivered content and not to the processes by which it is created, nor to the devices or user agents to which it is delivered. It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with the creation of Web sites, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as Web servers and HTTP. Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.

Unveiling The Japanese Mobile Market

The Wall Street Journal broke the news today about Sprint's version of the HTC Touch Diamond, a Windows Mobile smart phone with a touch screen and a new, 3-D interface.

Big in Japan, a Dallas-based idea factory for mobile applications, announced that its GoCart(TM) application - a personal shopping assistant - has been named one of 10 winners among nearly 1,800 entries in the Google Android Developer Challenge, a contest to build mobile-phone applications for the Android operating system. Big in Japan was awarded a $275,000 prize by Google for its winning entry.

Among the many websites that are out there, few are standards-compliant. Among those few, only a handful sport style sheets adjusted to the needs of handheld devices. Of those which do offer styling for handhelds, not all will fit the smallest, lowest-resolution screens without presenting the user with the ultimate handheld horror: namely, horizontal scrolling. The Opera browser runs on handheld devices of all screen sizes and resolutions, some of them only 120 pixels wide. We work for the company that produces Opera, so we can offer a degree of insight into the functions of Opera for handhelds. In this article, we've prepared a set of general suggestions for creating a handheld-friendly style sheet, along with a few Opera-specific pointers that you may find useful.

RIM could not arrange an interview with the E-Commerce Times in time for publication.