Presentation given at Vic.Net User Group in January 2012 --- Mobile devices like tablets and phones are quickly becoming the primary way people access the web. So why do so many websites still provide a horrible mobile experience? With ASP.NET MVC, it's easier than ever to literally put your site in the palm of everyone's hand. MVC 3 has many features that allow you to target mobile devices with different layouts and even content. The recent developer preview of MVC 4 makes things even easier and shows that Microsoft is really thinking about web-enabled devices. In this demo-heavy session, I'll look at the particular challenges with writing sites for mobile devices, and I’ll show some different techniques and third-party libraries that make targeting mobile devices easy, both in MVC3 and in the Developer Preview of MVC4. If you saw my talk at DDD Brisbane, rest assured I’ll be delving much deeper into the best way to target mobile sites and I’ll focus more on what MVC 4 will bring to the table.

1. Building Mobile
Websites with
ASP.NET MVC 3 & 4
Damian Brady
http://www.damianbrady.com.au
Twitter: @damovisa | #vicnet
Delivering Awesome Web Applications

2. Agenda
Why Target Mobile Devices?
Zero to MVP in ASP.NET MVC
Targeting Mobile Devices

3. Why Target Mobile Devices?
 ?
 More than ⅓ of Australians
access the Internet on their
mobile1
 In the US, 87% of smartphone
owners use it to access the
Internet2
 In Egypt, 70% of people
access the Internet exclusively
on smartphones3
1. AIMIA - http://www.aimia.com.au/home/news/member-news/aimia-releases-sixth-annual-australian-mobile-phone-lifestyle-index
2. PEW Internet - http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones.aspx
3. Phil Haack @ Build - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/TOOL-803T

4. Commbank.com

5. Australia.gov.au

6. Msdn.com

7. Asp.net

8. Apple.com

9. Sound Familiar?
“It only works on a desktop browser”
is the new
“It only works in IE”

10. Why?
 It doesn’t matter
 It’s too hard

11. Why it Matters
 Tablets and mobiles
 Bad experience = lost customer
What about Intranet?
 Remember IE6?

12. Too Hard?
 No.
 MVC is perfect for multiple devices
 Understand what’s happening and you’ll be fine

13. Our MVP
Basic survey site
5 questions for each survey
Looks nice on mobile
You have 51 minutes

15. Targeting Mobile Sites
 Viewport Metatags
 CSS Media Queries
 User-Agent Sniffing

16. Visual Viewport
Layout Viewport

18. Viewport Metatags
 Least effort
 Less than perfect results
 Same content sent

20. CSS Media Queries
 Supported by most mobile
devices
 Adaptive layouts
 Needs a good structure
 Some content can break it
 Same content sent + more

22. User-Agent Sniffing
 iPhone 4:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us)
AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293
Safari/6531.22.7
 HTC Desire:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.7; en-au; HTC Desire Build/GRI40)
AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile
Safari/533.1
 Windows Mobile:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5;
Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; <manufacturer>; <model> [;<operator])

23. User-Agent Sniffing
 Best Results
 Targeted (less) content
 Most effort
 Needs maintenance

24. Zero to Everywhere
Mobile is important
EF + MVC = MVP
Target Mobile Devices:
Viewport metatag
Adaptive CSS
User-agent sniffing

25. Top Tips
If starting from scratch:
1. Think about your structure and CSS
2. Never use flash or mouseover
events
3. Don’t redirect or change the URL
If modifying for mobile:
1. Start with general changes and get
more specific
2. Make use of tools and nuget
packages

26. 3 things…
 DamianBrady@ssw.com.au
 http://www.damianbrady.com.au
 @damovisa

27. Thank You!
Sydney | Melbourne | Brisbane | Adelaide
info@ssw.com.au
www.ssw.com.au
Delivering Awesome Web Applications