You’re web site may look great in your favorite browser on your computer, but that doesn’t mean it will display well to everyone else who views it on Macs and Windows computers, using Firefox, or Safari, or Internet Explorer (in any of the many editions which display code differently).

Making your site lo0k good in all the web browsers out there is hard enough, now you have to test your sites on iPhones, Blackberries, and a wide range of other mobile devices.

If you don’t have multiple computers and phones or all the browsers in use on the web today, you can use one of the online simulators covered in this post to test your site — even if all you have is one web browser you can use to access the web site simulators. [click to continue…]

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Firefox for Mobile: the Death Knell for App Stores?

by DaveLaFontaine on January 31, 2010

Designing for the wireless web just got a little more difficult in the short term – but in the long term, maybe a bit easier.  Firefox, the browser that now owns the majority of market share just released a browser that works on Nokia’s Maemo platform.

firefox for mobile official logo

There are other images suggested for this logo on the Flickr page for this group.Reminds me of Rocky the Flying Squirrel a bit.

What this means for designers is that sanity – so long absent from designing for the mobile web – may actually be in the cards for the future.  The possibility that the dizzying profusion of browsers could be replaced by something as universal as an open-source application like Firefox has got to be a breath of fresh air to anyone contemplating “mobilizing” their site.

Well, that is, if the general public all decide to download and use Firefox on their mobiles.  Which will only be possible if the hardware manufacturers decide to allow users to load and use a browser created by someone else. And if the carriers decide to allow traffic in and out of Firefox. And, and, and…

Well, you get the idea.

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Impulse-Shopping Via Mobile

by DaveLaFontaine on January 17, 2010

Get Married magazine uses Microsoft Tag barcodes to add mobile component to print ads.

The ads for high-end wedding related merch all have little custom barcodes that look like this.

Magazines and newspapers have been toying with the idea of “upselling” advertisers by including barcodes or imaging software that allows readers to point their smartphones at a printed page and have the code there prompt the phone to unlock some special content.  Rolling Stone tried it with pages that were supposed to do this; never really seemed to get any traction, though.

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Design for the capabilities, not the device

by janinewarner on January 7, 2010

Gavin Davies of Box UK makes a great case for delivering tailored versions of a mobile site based on the capabilities of a device, not on the type of device or browser being used. 

This approach gets at two of the biggest challenges of mobile web design — how to design for the vast number of different handsets and devices in use, and how to manage the fact that users  can change settings, such as turning Javascript on or off at will, which means you can’t assume that just because someone is using a Blackberry that they can view all of the features supported by a Blackberry…

In his thoughtful post, full of links to a great collection of resources,  Gavin describes how to use WURFL to determine device capabilities. The approach may seem complicated at first, especially if you’re not an experiened programmer, but this definitely looks like the best way to go if you want to set up a web site that works well on the broadest range of mobile devices.

Read the full article here http://www.boxuk.com/blog/mobile-device-capability-detection

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Hearst’s Skiff Reader Debuts at CES

January 4, 2010

As a reminder that “mobile” means so much more than “cellphone,” the newest entry to the e-reader space comes out this month. The specs look pretty good – 11.5″ screen, 1200×1600 resolution, touchscreen navigation, 4gigs with SD card expansion, 1/4 inch thick and the batteries last a week.

So far, so good. It’s even flexible. [...]

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More companies considering how to ‘mobify’ their websites

December 31, 2009

This quote from a recent Wall Street Journal article, sums it up:
Some companies are hesitant to build a mobile site because they want more than just a simple page displaying wares, said Robert Chimsky, a consultant for inCode Telecom. While there are still many companies without a mobile site or application, “given the way things [...]

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Droid vs. iPhone: the Terminator vs. Barbie?

December 4, 2009

Droid ad calls iPhone “tiara-wearing, digitally-clueless beauty pageant queen”
This fight has been shaping up for a while – the competitors scrambling for market share and “cool factor” have been growing ever more frustrated at the Apple juggernaut.  The App Store has pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the room for the last [...]

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BrowserCam tests web pages in mobile devices, email programs, and web browsers

December 2, 2009

www.browsercam.com
If you’re looking for the ultimate emulator where you can test your Web pages designs, mobile designs, and HTML email messages in just about any program any of your visitor is likely to use, BrowserCam is the place.
It’s not free (although there is a free trial) but it sure beats having to maintain all those [...]

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The Mobile Web vs. Apps

November 30, 2009

The iPhone craze has attracted loads of media attention and if you’ve watched any of Apple’s fantastic video ads about how you can use the iPhone Apps to do everything from find a parking place to translating for you on your next International adventure, you know that mobile Apps can do amazing things.
But if you’ve [...]

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Set up multiple mobile addresses to make your site easy to find

November 28, 2009

To make it easier for anyone with a mobile phone to guess the URL of your mobile site (and type as little as possible), set up all the mobile addresses you can and direct them all to the mobile version of your site.
Until we have a clear winner in the mobile URL game, the best [...]

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