hopefully my questions won't be too vague.
I designed a pretty simple website. You can see an image of it >>> here
But now I'm trying to make a mobile version.
However I'm contemplating using a different html for the mobile version since the desktop version has jquery pop-ups (prettyPhoto) and a very large backround that scales, which aren't great on mobile screens.
I'm unsure of how to do that. My first question therefore is:
1.) How do I call a different html for mobile?
Also, for tablets, the website renders pretty well in landscape mode but becomes weird in portrait mode. So my second question is:
2.) Can this different html be called based on width? If so, any ideas how?
So if tablet is viewing website in portrait mode, they get the mobile version, if they are seeing it in landscape mode, they get the desktop version.
I am not sure what you are attempting to do, but from experience as both developer and mobile user, what you propose is not a good idea. Again, since you have not mentioned what you are attempting to do, I am speaking generally. Consistency is very important for UX, and delivering completely different behaviours and looks for orientation does not sound like a good usability. Also, remember that on today's tablets, switching orientations is very easy. Would you load each version on each orientation change? What if the user is on 3G?
But technically, it is possible to load depending on width or orientation. Use AJAX, and load the appropriate content.
Related
i am developing an ios and android app from Ionic. my problem is since we have different device, different density. How do you handle the displaying of images. Are you just creating one image file that will be used on all the screen device?
The short answer is that yes you use one high quality image and let the browser on the device do the down scaling.
The slightly longer answer is that you can do some optimizations because your locked into a pretty tight set of standards compliant browsers so you'll want to follow best practices for those. By that I mean if you have graphics that are in vector format, great leave them as SVG's if you can. If you have raster images you'll want to have them at a resolution that looks great on your biggest retina display and you'll want to use media queries to adjust where necessary.
You can also use CSS tricks to replace images by hiding and showing appropriate images at appropriate times.
I am trying to convert my current website to a mobile version. I will be creating different views (I am using codeigniter) but want to make sure the CSS will look perfect on all phones. What are the universal/standard specs for a mobile website?
Also, what language is recommended? I was thinking just changing the CSS to a specific width and redesigning according to that width.
As there is no fixed limit of screen width/height of mobile devices. You must consider using percentage value for sizes. That way your mobile site will be more compatible.
For info on effective mobile websites, ie, what you should include and what not. Take a look here
http://www.qsrweb.com/article/202567/3-tips-for-creating-an-effective-mobile-website
For width related queries, see this,
Mobile version of my website, what design width is optimal?
A quick google search yields the following:
W3C's thoughts: http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/mobilweb.html
Smashing Magazine's thoughts (I have enjoyed some of their comparison articles before): http://www.smashingmagazine.com/guidelines-for-mobile-web-development/
You will want your page to be easy on the fingers, keep the text displayed to a minimum at first (i.e. summary + expanding things), and overall run fast. You will probably want to have multiple levels of fallback on things like CSS so that people running a CSS 1/2 browser can still use the website, even though CSS3 browsers may have a better experience.
Your site could also make use of media queries to choose a stylesheet based on the size of the user's screen (there are several standard sizes, especially if you consider the popular devices).
Javascript and other things like that should also work well for fallbacks. Using things like HTML5 canvases and WebSockets and such are good since they can be assisted directly by the mobile device hardware, but your script should handle those things not being available as well.
And, as always, an easy to navigate page goes a long ways just as it does with normal development. If the user can tell just by looking at the page how to use it intuitively (remember, intuitive for you isn't always the same as someone else), then I would think you are on the right track.
There are many takes on designing sites for mobile devices. The most straightforward, is to build an entirely separate user interface, just for the mobile site.
The next method would be to use CSS media-queries. This allows you to re-use your current UI and styling, but you can tailor it's content to specific widths and devices.
Lastly, is fully responsive design. It's rather similar to media queries, except that it uses percentages, instead of absolute pixels. It's the most seamless way, that a standard width-webpage can scale to fit the screen of a smaller mobile device. It can even scale up easily!
Here's a good place to start learning about responsive web design, and how it applies to mobile devices - http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-web-design/
Try scaling the size of your browser while on that site. Notice how the layout changes. That's CSS media queries at work.
I host a small web shop for a client who wants it to be easily accessible from mobile devices.
How do I detect if the user is browsing my site from a mobile device?
When I have done that, should I:
Check if the user has mobile device and then forward them to another site?
I think the advantages would be:
I can optimize layout from both sites for screensize
I can use different techniques in the two sites (eg. jquery mobile for mobile)
Use CSS for the different screen sizes => like on tutsplus
I think the advantage would be:
I only need one site but it seems to me heaps of work when talking about a small webshop
Ideally, you should try using jQuery Mobile page structure with your own CSS and JavaScript for non-mobile devices.
You can easily detect user's browser and conditional script includes as per html5 [boilerplate]:3
/* Grade-A Mobile Browsers (Opera Mobile, Mobile Safari, Android Chrome)
consider this: www.cloudfour.com/css-media-query-for-mobile-is-fools-gold/ */
#media screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
Main things to consider when aiming at iPhone users:
ensure there's no vital flash objects
on the page as it isn't supported by
many mobile browsers (yet?)
appropriate screen size (using
viewport meta tag)
keeping in mind that there's no mouse
cursors, meaning no
hover/double-clicks are available any
mouse dragging gestures are different
on touch devices
remember all pop-ups are open in new
tabs and won't be seen at the same
time as the main window, use
javascript modal divs as alternative
test all your javascript and css to
ensure everything looks and works the
same (Safari requires -webkit- prefix
for the newest CSS properties)
create a Home screen icon for your
website (a nice thing to have)
most of these things are covered here
take a look at Safari Dev Center for tutorials/videos/coding how to's etc.
There are several options but this is my favorite:
http://code.google.com/p/mobileesp/
Comes with a API in a couple of different languages as well
You don't need jQuery at all if you don't want to use it. We don't. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Number 2 is the best option. If you create a site with mobile in mind first, it's far, far easier to expand and manipulate for the desktop than trying to shrink things to a mobile screen.
JQuery Mobile is currently in beta 1 right now. Beta 2 will be out within a month. It is fairly stable at the moment and you can gain a lot of knowledge about what is considered "best practice" from them. You can use media queries for screen sizes for different platforms which JQuery Mobile also supports.
http://jquerymobile.com/
I have a website that I want to make look good from a non-mobile browser, but make very usable from a mobile device.
I'm thinking I'm going to detect if the user is likely using a mobile device, and if they are, redirect the first hit to a page that says something like: "It looks like you're viewing this page on a mobile device. Would you like to view the mobile version?" Based on the user selection, I'll set a cookie. (Would this be annoying, or helpful?)
But I'd also like to make sure that if I miss someone who is mobile browsing (if I think they're non-mobile, but it turns out they aren't), I provide some way to switch to the mobile version. Also, if I detect someone is mobile, but they'd prefer to browse the full non-mobile site, I need to allow that, too.
I'm leaning toward having a mobile and non-mobile version of every page on the site, just presenting the data differently (and with a lot less images, etc) for the non-mobile version.
Anyone who's been through this, have advice? Any links to sites that do this right?
I'd suggest using WURFL for the detection part.
Also, lots of good reading material about such practices on Mobiforge
I'm trying to determine what kinds of interactions a mobile website can handle. For example, I obviously can't track page-level dragging operations because this scrolls on mobile browsers. So, I'm looking for demos that can tell me what interactions work, how well, and hopefully for information about how consistently that is across mobile devices. For example, I'd like to know if I had a page that fit on the screen, would my page elements receive mouse move events when I drag my finger? I could test that myself, but I figure there are probably lots of things that could be tested, so I was hoping there was something like the ACID test, but for mobile UI interactions.
I don't think I've ever seen such a thing, but the thing to remember is the browser is just one key factor in the interaction between your application and the user. The capabilities of the device itself is a large part of what you can and cannot do. For one, the iPhone has a full JavaScript stack and CSS rendering ability as well as the ability to "click". However, on a BlackBerry you're going to lose a lot of that CSS and JavaScript functionality. Also, with Nokia handsets you're going to be dealing with a different beast. The best way to develop for something like this would be to either use a framework/device template like the ASP.NET Mobile platform, or to go as close to basic HTML as you can.
There is no silver bullet, and you're just going to have to try to cover as much market share as you can. One thing I can share, is that the more standards compliant and semantic your markup, the better it will render across the devices. Sometimes, you can even get away with just coding the site once provided your site degrades well when CSS and JS are not available.