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I just got notification that my site is now in the mobile first index in Google.
So does this mean that I should change my developing and work at a lower resolution oprimarily and then check "just to make" that it looks OK at higher resolutions?
I would imagine that there's very few people looking at my website on a mobile device due to its nature.
Tablets and smaller PCs maybe though.
I also got notified on Google Search Console.
I don't think that to optimize for it is to lower your website resolution.
Some basic optimization I might suggest are:
Make your website responsive
Avoid using heavy fonts and images
You can declutter your mobile view from the desktop, do not worry if the content will be different, as long that it will still relevant to your desktop.
Make sure your pages are crawlable by search engine robots (Check your javascript)
You can check this timely discussion about optimizing for mobile-first indexing
https://www.propelrr.com/blog/questions-google-mobile-first-indexing
I am a computer science student in my senior year at my local university. I recently was hired on as an intern to create a mobile web application. The mobile web application is very simple; it needs to interface with a data base to both give a full data base view for an administrator and for end users to fill out a simple survey. I have never done anything in web development before, so I did a little research and the tools that kept coming up where html, css, java script, and php. However, I also ran into other tools with different applications, like AJAX with Jquery, HTML5, and micrsofts asp.net. I have a basic understanding of html and css, but I haven't committed to a development platform yet. I wanted some advice on which one to choose, based on the following criteria:
1) I want to develop a website that is device neutral. So I want it to work well on both desktops and mobile devices.
2) No one knows the future, but I would like to use the development platform that is likely to become or remain the standard in the future.
3) It needs to be available as a part of a standard server platform for a typical web host
4) It needs to be able to dynamically generate web content and interface with an SQL data base.
I would really appreciate some advice, input, ect. I don't know if I will pursue a career in web development, but sense I already have to learn at least one development platform, I figure I might as well learn the right one.
Thank you for any advice and input.
If you don't have a web developer background and don't want to spend time learning it thoroughly, I would recommend using Google's GWT. It provides you with all the tools to implement your application purely in Java, without caring too much about the front end. As the whole thing's in Java, all the SQL handling can be done there, with the results sent to the front end.
Then, you can add built-in elements (flexible tables, panels, buttons, images, etc.) to the app, again, using Java only. You can get some CSS templates from the web and apply the styles without any HTML knowledge at all.
Once ready, you can compile the whole thing into JavaScript, with several permutations of the code compatible with most of the modern browsers. Then all you have to do is to deploy these generated JavaScript and HTML files onto your HTTP server and enjoy :) You can also touch the HTML directly if you have something that can't be applied through GWT but in the case of a simple webapp this won't be the case...
So, I worked on responsive sites before but I'm on my way to build my first responsive site now. I opened some articles on the subject, and boom: Mobile First.. I have no idea how I skipped that concept till now. From the beginning I cant seem to understand whole thing (except that number of mobile devices will take out soon desktop computers) and here is why.
How I'm supposed to know how my site will look for desktop version, if I design it for mobile first? I mean, on the smallest device I will have to eventually hide some content etc, how I'm supposed to know what to hide and move things, when I don't know how the site will look on bigger screen? Isn't stripping the things easier?!?!
For me (right now), the Mobile First concept looks to me like building pyramid upside down.
Most implementations actually have two sites: one for browsers and one for mobiles. The webserver redirects the client to m.your-domain.com (or mobile.your-domain.com) if it recognizes it as mobile accotding to the user-agent.
Still, there's room for responsiveness since you might decide to consider different screen sizes, both for mobiles as well as browsers - for example: iPad browser might display things differently than chrome on desktop.
Remark:
Even though we already reached the point where major portion of the internet traffic is done by mobile devices, your site/service might be such that most of its clients will be laptops/desktops. Take Stackoverflow for example :)
You should use google analytics and see what's the split and decide according to that if it's really worth putting energy into it (and if so - how much).
In my opinion. mobile first applies more to apps than to websites. It is relatively easy to make a responsive website, or two versions of a website, to accommodate different screen sizes. It is much more difficult to create an app that works equally well on both small, mostly touch-driven screens, and large desktop screens. In applications the difference is more than just what information you can fit into an available screen real estate. Mobile applications often have a different UI flow and use a different set of components (widgets).
Once you have analyzed your requirements, you have to answer a key question: can a single application/website offer a great user experience on both desktop and mobile devices? If it can, go for it. If it cannot, then you arrive at the mobile first concept: these days it is often better to start with a mobile experience. It will work on large screens too, even though it may look a little strange and it will not take full advantage of a desktop environment. If you app is successful, you can always create a desktop-optimized version.
Note that I said "often", not "always". There are many applications that users still prefer to access from their desktops. If you build one of those applications, there is nothing wrong with going desktop first.
stripping away stuff scaling down your website to a mobile website is not a best practice. nor is mainting two separate websites. starting from mobile lets you focus on what you really need and on the content of your site. don't think "graphics" but think "content"
I want to develop a web Application to manage school administration. But I am not clear, which technology should I use to create Rich Internet Application. At present, develeopment company is going with ASP.net tools and say this is a web app.
However, there is page refresh on every click. Which I don't like. Please suggest, where to proceed.
Regards
Piyush
In a plain ol ASP.NET application, the screen refresh can be eliminated by using update panels in webforms, or by using more of the AJAX capabilities of the MVC Framework. (Wikiplex on Codeplex has a crazy simple example of this that I love in their example application).
Between Silverlight and Flash, however, Silverlight is designed to be a Web Application, or (at times) a desktop application in a Browser, while Flash is more of a multimedia framework.
Since it is school administration, which doesn't require random people to have Silverlight installed, Silverlight and JS/AJAX are both good options. Both are built into the ASP.NET set of libraries, and have good support in Visual Studio. Flash is a bit of an outsider in this regard.
So to sum up:
In general JavaScript/AJAX > Silverlight but either would be great.
If you are totally against any screen refresh, I'd lean more towards Silverlight.
If the developers are very familiar with Flash and communicating with the server with Flash, then I'd say it is also an option, but with no knowledge on all three and I'd not pick Flash first.
It's a little late for a response to the initiator. But I didn't agree with some of the answers I read here, and since google is popping this up in the search returns I felt compelled to align my answer on this board.
First off, a lot of developers create applications in ASP.NET and AJAX because they are comfortable with it not because the technology is better. For years, what it took one person to develop in the Adobe Flex framework, took many developers to create in AJAX. There is no more AJAX versus Flex, there's just Flex. Who wants to write a hundred lines of code in AJAX to do the same thing it takes 1 line of code in Flex. That's why the cost with an AJAX deployment was always more expensive.
On ASP.NET, you're right. Who wants to see the page refresh every time you perform an action? Not to mention, no browser follows the HTML implementations exactly, so how .NET app looks in 1 browser would look different in another browser, in addition to differences witnessed with the various browser versions.
Most ASP.NET, heck even Coldfusion Applications are clunky in HTML. So with that in mind all of my gui development is done in Adobe Flex. When a flash file is created, it compatible with 99% of the browsers (safari on mobile devices excluded), and all of the Operating Systems are supported. I'll tell you what, you can get silverlight to work in linux but have fun while it loads 50MB of MS software on your Linux OS. Not to mention Flash has a 99% market penetration. So it's already preloaded on machines and browsers.
Plus flash supports most picture formats and SVG natively. Did you know Silverlight became notorious because they don't support even a GIF/BMP formats? Forget SVG if you're using Silverlight because it doesn't support it. What's SVG? Look it up! It's only the most useful way to create any image you want right in a flex app. For instance maps are useful in SVG. AND its just a small file. Not a horrendous large file.
Language, Flex is just easier to program in and there's a lot of support for it. Think I'm kidding, try for yourself. You can download a Free version of flex for 30 days. Forgive my ignorance but I don't even know where to begin on loading Silverlight. I've got visual studio and all that but I gave up after trying. But that was 1 year after it's release so it may have changed.
And frankly, if you or a developer can't afford flex, DON'T BUY IT. Instead, download eclipse, which is free forever. Adobe Flex is only a special iteration customized by Adobe anyway. So you probably won't get charting and some other components in eclipse, but most of the GUI components are built right into Eclipse.
Programming ASP.NET is just old hat. It's clunky, difficult to work with and it's possible to corrupt the files. It's not possible at all to corrupt your project files in Flex/Eclipse because they are just TEXT files. How cool is that?
Don't get me wrong, I program in ASP.NET too. But I like it for Application server processes; you know like the middleman between database and client. SQL server feeds ASP, and ASP feeds my Flex GUI using SOAP. Big plus is even though I hate Visual studio crystal reports, it's still way better than nothing. Believe me you want to have some reporting possibilities like CF Report Builder or crystal reports. Some people just like a nicely formatted PDF and that's all there is to it.
I've released hundreds of applications using various technologies. Right now this is my favorite. But frankly, a good GUI can be done anywhere if you are a 'kung fu' master. I'm saying that although it's easier out of the gates to program in Flex compared to .NET/Silverlight, someone with some mad .NET skills can put a Flex app to shame. But as it stands right now, there is no argument that Flex is the stronger candidate with the most market penetration, flexibility, and ease of use.
Good luck all...
ASP.NET does provide some special sauce for AJAX, so it's entirely possible to eliminate the page load without leaving ASP.NET. If you leave ASP.NET, the options are endless: Java, Silverlight, JQuery, Flash, etc. ad infinitum.
Silverlight and Flash are great for richer user interfaces, however I dont think they should be used for the "whole" interface or application. Its best to narrow down these parts and decide how rich these need to be, then evaluate which technology to use. If you just want to prevent full round trips to the server on a page, AJAX is a good option. I would also recommend Silverlight over Flex, since you probably/already have the tools.
I know this question has been asked a million times in various ways by different businesses, but I'm wondering the community's opinion on it [There's this question, but in the fast-moving world of tech, a year is a long time]. For hypotheoretical purposes, let's consider a website where users can watch videos, a la YouTube, Hulu, etc. (actually, it's an on-demand transcoding solution, but close enough). The website could deployed:
Using HTML, JavaScript, and HTML5's <video> tag
Using HTML, JavaScript and Flash (like most are right now)
Using HTML, JavaScript and Silverlight just for the video player
Using Silverlight for navigation, creating a rich all-Silverlight experience
(Let's assume, again hypoteoretically, that the all-Silverlight version is not as annoying as most all-Flash pages are today, but instead provides an experience similar to a desktop application)
Which way would be able to reach a large percentage of the population? How would people feel about having to install Silverlight to view a site -- how much would they want to see the content to make them click the install button? What if a user is browsing the site at the library on on another public computer with limited bandwidth, possibly using older hardware and with an unprivileged user account -- how easy would it be for them to install the Silverlight runtime?
I really want to use Silverlight since I like its' model (I've been using it for an internal app at work, and I think it's an excellent platform), however I'm afraid that for a public site, a large percentage of users would not be able to view the site, then Flash may be better option.
EDIT:
Well, the idea is to have a player where users can access videos on their home PCs from the web. So the users usually won't be using a home PC -- they'll be using work PCs, friend's PCs, public PCs, etc. That's why I'm worried about the security/install privileges issue.
Start with what each of technologies can do for you and match that against your requirements re: content delivery. Assuming each is just as good as the other for the purpose at hand, and that you have the requisite skills in each or dont mind learning them to produce your content, then dont see player distribution as a problem.
Users not having the priviledges to install the player should it be absent would generally be considered an edge case. If your site is specifically targeting a user group to which this is more likely to apply then obviously it requires deeper consideration but at the end of the day you're always going to have a percentage of surfers who cant do something, or use something, for some reason. In this case it's likely a small percentage and good design dictates some form of graceful degradation regardless of the technology being deployed.
Your other questions re: user preferences is difficult to gauge. Here is a list of sites that clearly dont think its an issue. You'd have to extrapolate the adoption rate numbers but this link, albeit to an MS blog entry, suggests the adoption rate is high, especially considering Silverlights relatively short life.
You also have to factor in that it's an MS technology so you're going to benefit from Windows Update, etc and the strength of the MS marketing machine.
Recommendation: Go for it. The more the merrier.
..
Richard
This line is the decider for me:
I really want to use Silverlight since I like its' model
If you like Silverlight enough to really want to use it, go for it. The UI will be as useful or as annoying as you make it, so Flash has nothing intrinsic over Silverlight there. It comes down to whether Silverlight will do what you want it to.
HTML5 and its suite of technologies are a far better fit at this level. I went to a Microsoft confrence recently and the HTML5 talks where all booked out and the Silverlight talks had hardly any attendees. You can get a web application to almost have a normal application experience with JQuery ajax and HTML5.
Due it is an MS technology, Silverlight is successful for its short life, like Bing (i believe if it wasn't developed by MS most people wouldn't even know its name). But i would not use it for a website actually, most people dont want to install new things unless they have to. And if your site does not have a content that they will desire, they can go away from your site. I'm a Java developer but i dont use JavaFX for web apps, because most user machines have Flash installed it is a better choice for accessibility reasons. Silverlight is a new field for MS but Flash is around for years and it's one of the main focuses of Adobe.