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
Related
i'm a little new to this topic, i've always used to work with responsive design to do this but for a new situation i have to change the content that will load on Mobile Devices than regular PCs, My Control Panel is Direct Admin on Windows server, what i should i do?
check out this answer on how to redirect mobile users to a different site - Redirect mobile devices to alternate version of my site
In addition to this I'll also chime in with the fact that people will browser most sites on both the mobile and the desktop, starting the journey on one and finishing it on another. They might also find something useful on one which they share online, only for another device type to be used when trying to read the content.
These are all reasons why we argue for content parity.... the same content for every instance. I'm sure your client believes they have a good reason for this, but I would encourage them to re-evaluate the decision before starting this process.
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 know how to design a website. The website is shown normal on the web and mobile, but I need to know which one is better?
Design two different templates (one template for mobile and the other one for a normal monitor).
Check online through the user's device to see if its using a mobile device so I can change the stylesheet.
Is this correct? If there are any ideas, please tell me.
Thanks
I would go for 1. Normally you don't want to show as much content on your mobile website as your "normal" desktop website. But include a link to your normal website from your mobile website.
I would go for one, as axelios suggested, I would include a link.
I, as a user, find extremely annoying websites that refuse to display the full site because they "recognised my browser as a mobile browser". Several newssites do that, which has eventually diminished the number of news I read, and some shops did so, which means I don't visit their sites anymore... so I strongly discourage the second solution.
I am developing a mobile site for iphone, and i want it to be used in other mobiles, for example, gphone, blackberry, sumsong, motorola etc.
what should i do for adapting the mobile site for so many different mobile devices?
Thanks for any advice.
Unfortunately I do not think there is an easy answer to this, other than to say that the simpler you make your mobile site the more likely it is to appear correctly/consistently across multiple devices/networks. You also need to consider the 'app' mindset with iPhone, where something that previously might have been presented simply as a web site, is now frequently presented in an app instead. Finally, bear in mind that many phones do not support flash (iPhone famously..), silverlight, javascript etc. If your site loses too much of its look and feel without these than you may have to redirect to targeted sub-sites per phone type.
See this similar question which may help you get a feel first for how your web site looks on different devices and in different networks:
Testing Mobile Sites
If you do need to change the look and feel for different phones, then you will need some way to detect the phone types - there are many articles etc about this which you should be able to find with Google - for example:
http://www.hand-interactive.com/resources/detect-mobile-php.htm
Again, it would be good to test whatever one you use in your target network to check it works as expected (operators may use devices, for example proxies and optimisers, which may affect how things arrive at your webserver or phone...).
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.