With the advent of smart phones, individuals are now able to access a given site or application in one of three ways:
Through the same site that is rendered on desktop machines
Through a minimized mobile version of the site
Through a proprietary mobile application
In an ideal world, users could choose from any of those three methods. However, there is a cost associated with implementing additional interfaces on top of the existing Web interface.
I'm seeking verifiable information (statistics, trends, Gartner predictions, etc.) that could help someone justify the creation of a minimized mobile site and/or proprietary mobile applications vs. having a well-crafted site that renders fine in mobile browsers.
I found an article covering Nielsen's 2009 recommendation but the article seems to suggest that you should address mobile users, not so much how to determine which method(s) are more appropriate (not to mention there aren't any references to mobile apps).
If your site renders fine in mobile browsers, why would you need a minimized one? Remember not everyone has an iPhone. Blackberry users usually need a special version, unless your site has Wikipedia like simplicity.
You can look at your logs and see how many users come that have mobile phones. Check this against the bounce rate, this will tell you if they can view your site or not.
Related
I already have a website with huge database which is good for Desktop browser my site is on Joomla base. Now i want to develop for Smartphone (like iphone, android, nokia) and mobile browsers. So how can i achieve this goal what is the best way of doing this.
Mobile Sites like Yahoo, Youtube i want to developed something like this because i'm new to developing mobile sites so any one can suggest me the right way for developing the mobile version for my current Desktop Site.
Thanks in advance
There are extensions for Joomla that style your site for mobile usage here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/mobile.
It makes sense to test your site using the emulators for iPhone, Android and Symbian at some stage before you release. Each software development kit includes the ability to use the mobile browser.
Note that this is not the whole story. You'll want to consider:
Mobile users have much smaller displays. You'll need to rework your UI to take account of this.
Mobile users have large fingers. You'll need to rework your buttons and links to take account of this.
Mobile users tend to consume content rather than create it. Optimise accordingly.
Searching for data with e.g. traditional search boxes is tricky; you may need to rework to use scrolling through lists.
Above all: test, test, test!
Have a look at http://www.mobilejoomla.com/
I am considering developing a mobile edition of a web site for an application, and I'm considering whether to revamp my existing site to work for mobile, or create separate web sites. It seems to me even though some tout the benefits of CSS's capabilities, separate web sites is the way to go. Although devices like the IPAD and other 10" devices can support a full screen view, handling support for a limited view for devices with a 4" or 7" screen is a good way to go?
Factoring in phones, tablets, notebooks, and other third party devices, do you think its possible to use the same site across web and mobile environments, or definitely consider a separate site?
Ultimately, this will come down to the individual preferences of your site's visitors.
Personally, when I visit a site on my phone, I get annoyed when I'm automatically redirected to some mobile version. When I access the site in such a manner, I'm usually trying to look up something quickly -- not looking to learn how to navigate around an essentially different site.
So, I would say that if you do design a different site for mobile users, attempt to stay true in some ways to your original layout, and don't vastly change the reorganization or URLs.
Having said that, I'd still say the better route would be to change your current design slightly so that it works well on both. Good luck.
Factoring in phones, tablets, notebooks, and other third party devices, do you think its possible to use the same site across web and mobile environments, or definitely consider a separate site?
Absolutely, yes. Lots of great examples at http://responsivewebdesigns.tumblr.com/
When creating a mobile version of your website, is it better to redirect the user to a domain name that is designated as the mobile version or should you just switch templates internally and serve the mobile content on the same domain.
The redirect will cause more loading time but is there some other usability reason for using that approach?
I have developed some mobile web applications. Although my application has mobile detecting and it renders content dinamicaly. I like to have a mobile domain, it is useful and good for SEO. I include a bottom link for changing from desktop to mobile web.
Before answering your question, I suggest you see this xkcd cartoon.
Now on to your question. Some sites does maintain a seperate domain for smart phones. That is to avoid overloading the phone which probably has a limited bandwidth. So if your site is rich and have lot of animations, then you do not want to serve the same page to smart phones. The problem with this approach is what the cartoon talks about. (this has happened a thousand times for me and my "smart" phone)
Now if you have a simpler website, that performs well under lower bandwidth, then switching the template is a much better solution. The only usability problem is, if your mobile css is way different from your normal css, this might throw some people off guard. ( after all usability is for computer illiterates and pseudo geeks, a geek will get the information he needs in a dumpster).
For search engines (that is, google) it doesn't matter: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html
And there are really no technical factors that lead to one choice or another.
They each have some benefits.
Same domain:
redirect not needed
new features easier to integrate
less marketing needed
Separating domains:
more separation of technical concerns
can market separately
can migrate to a different machine if traffic requires
I have an existing website running. I want this site to be able to be viewed on mobiles smart phones as well. I am ready to shave off some stuff, but would like to know how can I test this and are there any tools/guidelines on how to repurpose the site to be best viewed on mobile phones ? How to detect on the web site whether a mobile phone or a PC is hitting the site and accordingly serve the appropriate content.
There are few factors to consider such as:
- screen size
- touch vs non-touch
To detect whether the mobile phone hitting your site, you can simply verify the user agent.
There is a good article on this at A List Apart which will answer your implementation questions: Put Your Content in My Pocket
You can test by setting the user agent of your browser to that of mobile device. This can be done in safari under the develop settings, or firefox has various plugins.
And a tip, don't use anything that requires hover functionality. Touch screens don't hover.
You will find out it's a strange new world at http://mtld.mobi/
First decision you should make is which mobile platforms you want to support, then start coding...
As some one mentioned http://mtld.mobi/ is the best place to start for resources but for testing I would use http://ready.mobi that will test and debug your site and provide interface to viewing your website in mobile platforms.
First you need to decide what platforms/browsers you are going to support. If it is only smart phones like Android/Iphone/Blackberry it would be a pretty safe bet that as long as the website works in crome and isn't VERY javascript intensive and the site is catered for smaller screens it would be fine.
That is the theory in practise mobile is mobile and real world testing is the only way to go for 100% coverage.
With all the different mobile phone browsers and the mobile market being so diverse I'm having a hard time deciding on a way to create a text based online game for mobile phones.
I was thinking about using HTML / CSS / Javascript for front-end and Python CGI for server-side (with a DB).
Now this seems like a very obvious choice... BUT I'm having a hard time finding the "limits" to each one... by that I mean at what point will a popular web browser stop 'supporting' a technology. Like when it comes to HTML I assume you cant use HTML5 features in all popular mobile browsers... or maybe some allow JS but not jQuery... or maybe some don't allow some common CGI features or DOM is weird... I do not know.
I have read a few different tutorials on various mobile web browser development but nothing really helps to answer my question.
So what I'm asking is basically:
What languages/technologies do you recommend for a Text based mobile online multiplayer turn based browser game that will need to dynamically load a lot of info?(front front end to back end)
What are some common limitations between popular mobile web browsers I should look out for? I want to be compatible with all popular mobile web browsers.
One of the things to keep in mind is that there is a plethora of mobile browsers out there (Look here for details). So you are probably better off starting with iphone, android and blackberry and maaaybe opera mini browser support. These browsers have sophisticated java script support and you would be able to provide a good user experience. Later on you can work on supporting other mobile browsers.
Regarding your questions, if you look at these browser specs (and they are readily available on Internet) you will see that you will be able to use quite a bit of web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc). That wont be a showstopper for you. Designing for a small screen, and a great user experience on small screens, that will make or break your game.