Mobile Web Design & Development 2011

Mobile Web Design & Development

In the mobile telecommunications industry, the
technology is represented by two separate, yet
equally important groups: the mobile devices,
and the cellular networks that connect them.
(These are their stories...)

2

Evolution of cell networks

1G, 2G, 3G, 4G...
generations of cellular network technology that
describe the maturity and capabilities of cellular
networks
most obvious trend is speed/bandwidth increase

3

Evolution of mobile devices

4

Brick era: 1973 - 1988

Motorola DynaTAC
5

Candybar era: 1988 - 1998

Critical mass. Mainstream.
SMS (ﬁrst non-voice communication)

6

Feature phone era: 1998 -
2008
cameras
addition of packet-switched data services to networks
allowed ﬁrst use of the Internet on a phone.
little real innovation and inconsistent interpretation of agreed
upon standards.
WAP 1.0 and WML provided a “dumbed down” version of
the web
stiﬂed by network operators who focussed on providing
downloadable ringtones, wallpapers, themes etc they could
sell through network portals.
poor adoption of mobile web by consumers
Motorola
RAZR
7

Smart phones: 2002 -
present
some overlap between what is considered a
feature phone and a smart phone.
use a common operating system, a larger
screen size, a QWERTY keyboard or stylus
for input, and Wi-Fi or another form of high-
speed wireless connectivity.
consistent frameworks for creating
applications and services, and a reusable
infrastructure to innovate
WAP 2.0 speciﬁed use of cut down versions
of XHTML (XHTML-MP) and CSS, bringing
development back in line with the desktop
web.
Though standards compliance is still poor.

8

Some early mobile web browsers

Text

NetHopper for Apple Pocket Internet Explorer Opera Mini
Newton 3.0

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Evolution-of-mobile-web-browsing_id9059 9

Touch phone era: January
9, 2007 - present
Though the majority of the technology in the original
iPhone had already been available from other
manufacturers, what was notable about the iPhone
was how it changed every-day perceptions of what
mobile technology can do.
It made using the mobile web worth while from a
consumer standpoint.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/iphone-
users-are-mobile-web-junkies/
It made developing for the mobile web worth while
from a content provider and developer standpoint.
Standards compliant web browsers that use the same
rendering engines as their desktop counterparts.

11

Why mobile?
Of the 6 Billion people on
Earth, 3.6 Billion people own or
have access to mobile devices.
Of those 1.6 Billion (and
growing rapidly) have access to
the web through a mobile
device.
Thats 500 million more people
predicted growth of mobile web access
than have access to Internet
connected desktop computers.
13

“The [mobile] phone is bigger in its reach than the car
(800 million), TV (1.5 billion), or Internet (1.1 billion). It
will make bigger changes in the next decade than any
of these did. The [mobile] phone adds the combined
utility of the ﬁxed telephone, Internet, computer, credit
card, and TV. The phone will impact your life in more
ways than we can imagine, because of its multi-
functionality aspect, and its reach.” - Tomi Ahonen
http://fora.tv/2009/09/24/

14

Worldwide, the share of Internet pageviews originating from
mobile devices increased 148% in the year to December ’09

http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Mobile+Report 15

Global population vs Mobile population

16

Worldwide, the share of Internet pageviews originating from
mobile devices increased 148% in the year to December ’09

http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Mobile+Report 17

Operating System share of mobile web

http://gs.statcounter.com 18

Browser share of mobile web


Browser share of mobile web by region - Africa


Browser share of mobile web by region - South America


Browser share of mobile web by region - Asia


Browser share of mobile web by region - Japan


Browser share of mobile web by region - Europe


Browser share of mobile web by region - North America


Browser share of mobile web by region - Oceania


Identifying target market

The global mobile device market is especially
fragmented. Usage trends rarely map neatly across
geography or demographics such as age, wealth,
gender, education, profession etc.
It is therefore critical more-so than ever to identify and
proﬁle your target users’ needs and capabilities.

27

How do people use the
mobile web?

Most common content segments are news, email,
weather, sports, city guides, and social networks
Mobile users tend to perform quick, task based
behaviours, often whilst in-between other tasks or
multi-tasking.

Mobile usage in Australia
2009
43% of online Australians now
own a smartphone
26% of social network users
participated in mobile social
networking in the past year.
66% of mobile social
networkers are under 35 years
of age

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/australia-getting-more-social-
online-as-facebook-leads-and-twitter-grows/ 29

Mobile internet usage in Australia 2010

96% of Australian
consumers own a
mobile phone
of these 41% use it to
access the internet (up
from 26% last year)

http://www.about.sensis.com.au/small-business/sensis-ebusiness-report/
30


Accessing information was
a key use of internet on
mobile phones, with
looking for maps, weather
and news the top
applications.
Social networking was also
a highly used application;
on par with people looking
for information on products
and services (56% each).

31


Australians are not just using
the internet on their mobile
phones when other methods of
connection are not available.
The most frequently nominated
places for Australians to use
the internet on their mobile
phones was at home or work
(42%), regardless of the fact
that they were likely to have
other methods to connect to
the internet at either of these
locations.

32

Developing a mobile strategy

1. Deﬁne the users’ context.
2. Determine users’ goals and how they are altered by
context.
3. Determine the tasks the users want to perform to
achieve goals.
4. Filter content by context, such as location, media, and
model.

Context
Mobile devices have an unparalleled ability to leverage the
context in which information is consumed (and produced)
Context refers to the surroundings, circumstances,
environment, background, or settings which determine, specify,
or clarify meaning - a mental model to establish understanding.
physical context (e.g. location)
media context (what device is being used to access the
content)
modal context (user’s state of mind)

Context

Wikitude eRuv: A Street History in Semacode

Context
Who are your users? What do you know about them? What type of behaviour can you
assume or predict?
What is happening? What are the circumstances in which they will best absorb the
content you intend to present?
When will they interact? When they are home and have large amounts of time? At
work, where they have short periods of focus? During idle periods, while waiting for a
train?
Where are they? Are they in a public space or a private space? Are they inside or
outside? Is it day or is it night?
Why will they use your app? What value will they gain from your content or services in
their present situation?
How are they using their mobile devices? Are they held in the hand or in the pocket?
How are they holding it? Open or closed? Portrait or landscape?

from Mobile Design and DevelopmentPractical concepts and techniques for creating mobile sites and web apps by Brian Fling

Application context
utility: informative:

short, task-based scenarios only goal is to provide information.
Importance is on providing relevant
minimal input, at-a-glance information information up front.
e.g. calculator, clock, weather e.g. news sites, google reader,
forecast wikipedia
locale: productivity:
use geolocation data to add context heavily task-based content and
to information - e.g. ﬁnd restaurants services.
close to me.
e.g. ebay, banking
e.g. google maps, foursquare
immersive:
designed to consume the user’s
attention.
often for entertainment purposes.
e.g. games, video, google street-view

Application context


Sovereign vs Transient
application
sovereign application monopolises the user's attention
for long periods of time (e.g. wordprocessor)
transient application comes and goes, presenting a
single, high-relief function with a tightly restricted set of
accompanying controls. The program is called when
needed, it appears and performs its job, then it quickly
leaves (e.g. instant messaging/SMS application)
desktop applications tend to be sovereign while mobile
applications tend to be transient.

Advantages of Mobile
Devices
Popularity
Personal and personalisable
Portable
Constant connectivity, always on and always with you
At the point of creative impulse
Built-in payment channel
Captures social context of media consumption/
production
Can interact with their environment

Mobile devices can interact
with their environment

clock
camera
calendar
microphone
telephony
thermometer
messaging
geolocation
ambient light
altitude
compass

Mobile is a usage scenario more than a
form factor

mobile users are mobile
they expect applications to adapt to their
(unpredictable) surroundings

Mobile Device Design Constraints
Presentation Issues
Screen size, resolution, colour reproduction

http://sender11.typepad.com/sender11/2008/04/mobile-screen-s.html


Input
Limited keypad, small keys
Pointing device? Touch? D-pad?
Affects navigation
Bandwidth & Cost
Speed and latency issues, especially for lengthy
content or content that requires a lot of navigation
between pages


Hardware limitations
Processing power, memory, battery life etc.
Usage environment is unpredictable and changing (e.g.
lighting conditions)
User Goals
more immediate and goal-directed intentions than
desktop web users
Limited, adhoc or no standards compliance
Limited implementations of html, css and JavaScript

Device fragmentation
Proprietary browsers
The range of device and browser capabilities is much, much more varied
than on the desktop
Taming the madness - databases like Device Atlas and WURFL which contain
data on thousands of mobile devices.

Implementation options for
mobile applications


Native application vs web
application?
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/apps-vs-the-web/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
will_mobile_web_apps_eventually_replace_native_apps
.php
http://mobileanalyticssimpliﬁed.com/post/439404358/
the-future-is-the-mobile-web-not-the-mobile-app

Native mobile application

Pros Cons
Offer best user experience, Cannot be easily ported to
leveraging all device features. other mobile platforms -
multiple device support is
Built in revenue model (app
costly.
stores)
Require certiﬁcation and
distribution from a third party
that you have no control over.
Require you to share revenue
with the one or more third
parties.

49

Mobile web application

Pros Cons
Easy to create, using Can be challenging (but
basic HTML, CSS, and not impossible) to support
JavaScript knowledge. across multiple devices.
Simple to deploy across They don’t always
multiple handsets. support native application
features, like ofﬂine mode,
Content is accessible on
location lookup,
any mobile web browser.
ﬁlesystem access,
camera, etc.

50

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp

Mobile browser capabilities


Main Mobile Browser Engines

Webkit Presto Gecko Trident
Safari
Chrome
Mobile Safari Firefox
Opera Internet Explorer
Android Browser Firefox Mobile
Opera Mobile IE Mobile
Blackberry (Fennec)
Palm
Kindle
53

Webkit
Same rendering engine as used in Safari and Chrome
on the desktop - capable of rendering the “real web”
on mobile.
Standards compliant.
Used in mobile browsers by Apple, Android and Nokia,
which together account for by far the largest chunk of
of the mobile internet market.
Inﬂuencing other browsers to catch up fast.

54

HTML 5 to the rescue.
HTML 5, and the current climate of New functionality allowed by HTML
intense development around 5 includes:
optimising both desktop and
native support for audio and
mobile browsers for web
video (without plugin)
applications are quickly closing the
gap between web and native canvas element for drawing /
applications, especially in the animation
mobile domain.
document editing
http://html5demos.com/
ofﬂine storage (keep working
http:// without internet connection)
www.chromeexperiments.com/
drag and drop
http://www.apple.com/html5/
geolocation

55

Geolocation
http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html
http://diveintohtml5.org/geolocation.html
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html5/html5-
geolocation/
https://student.ci.qut.edu.au/~sade/geo/geo-watch-
example.html

56

CSS 3
allows for creating more complex designs using the
minimum of images, making it ideal for mobile design
gradients
transitions
animations
custom typography
http://www.css3.info/preview/

57

Javascript
DHTML
AJAX
event handling (e.g. multi-touch events)
http://tlrobinson.net/blog/2008/07/11/multitouch-
javascript-virtual-light-table-on-iphone-v20/
http://jquerymobile.com/

58

Full-screen web apps

<meta content="width=device-width, user-scalable=no, initial-scale=1.0"
name="viewport" />

<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black" />

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="images/myappicon.png"/>

<link rel="apple-touch-startup-image" href="images/startup.png"/>

http://developer.apple.com/library/IOS/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/ConﬁguringWebApplications/ConﬁguringWebApplications.html

59

Trends towards the future...
The trends are towards even more “native” feel.
persistence
push
more APIs for accessing phone features (telephony, address
book, location, camera, media, ﬁlesystem etc.)
embedded web (pervasive throughout phone os)
http://www.slideshare.net/pgolding/mobile-web-evolution-rich-
mobile-applications-and-realtime-web-ux
http://www.slideshare.net/ricferraro/evolution-of-mobile-web-ric-
ferraro-presentation

Native application vs web application -
the narrowing gap.

http://www.slideshare.net/mihaiionescu/html5-and-google-chrome-devfest09

Native application vs web application?

either way the implementation may differ, the design
principles are very much the same

Designing for multiple screen sizes and
orientations

http://mobiforge.com/designing/story/effective-design-multiple-screen-sizes
http://sender11.typepad.com/sender11/2008/04/mobile-screen-s.html

Average screen size is increasing.

Pixel density

physical screen size and resolution do not map as
neatly on mobile as they do on desktop
pixel density is increasing faster than physical screen
size (ﬁngers remain largely the same)

Designing for multiple screen sizes and orientations

Decide early on which screen sizes you will design for (needs analysis).
Write semantic code that communicates without the addition of complex visuals.
Where possible use ﬂexible layouts that automatically adapt/scale to screen width. (Modern,
touch browsers are good at doing this themselves with pinch-zoom, tap-zoom and auto-
orientation)
Responsive web design with CSS media queries - http://www.alistapart.com/articles/
responsive-web-design/
Deﬁne rules for content adaption across screen sizes.

Viewport meta tags
<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="true" />
<meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320" />
<meta name="Viewport" content="width=device-
width" />

Viewport meta tags

With Without

Information architecture -
Navigation

Most make or break component of mobile interface
design. Users will quickly get frustrated with poor
navigation and go elsewhere / give up.
Affected by both display and input and compounded
by the network latency.

Navigation - input
Scroll Touch

Design touch friendly web
pages
Finger tips are typically around 10mm in size
Space elements far enough apart to avoid overlaps
between touch targets.
A stylus can easily be used on an interface designed for
touch, but not the other way round.
Take advantage of multi-touch gestures
use sensors, local storage, contextual form inputs etc
to reduce required manual input.

Contextual HTML5 form inputs

73

Contextual HTML5 form inputs

74

Mobile contextual links
<a href="tel:0412345678">Call Me</a>
<a href="sms:0412345678">SMS Me</a>

75

Navigation - desktop vs mobile

Typical desktop webpage
layout with horizontal primary
navigation and secondary
sidebar navigation does not
map well to the mobile

Navigation - desktop vs mobile

Typical mobile webpage
layout
Design for vertical scrolling
The most contextual
information at the top
Content consumes majority
of the screen
Exit points at the bottom

Navigation - mobile
The most common method of
creating mobile navigation schemes is
to use a simple vertical list of options,
often assigning and listing the
corresponding numbers (0–9) to the
accesskeys for keypad navigation.
Showing multiple levels of navigation
within your list usually doesn’t work
well because it gives users too many
options and consumes valuable
screen area. A better way is to show
only the options related to the page
they’re viewing.

http://mobiforge.com/book/mobile-web-navigation-paradigms

Putting contextually relevant information
above the fold

The area of a page that
is viewable without
scrolling (known as
“above the fold”) is
much smaller on a
mobile screen.
The most contextually
relevant information
should appear above
the fold.

Use top-aligned labels for
forms

Don’t reinvent the wheel
Often (but not always) common design problem
patterns have common solutions. Take advantage of
the research and expertise of others.
http://patterns.design4mobile.com/index.php/
Main_Page#Design_Patterns
http://patterntap.com/
http://www.mobileawesomeness.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/13/

Designing for different
mobile browser capabilities


Progressive enhancement / graceful
degradation


Keep content, logic and presentation separate

Model-View-Controller Framework

e.g. Template Views

e.g. Wordpress Controller

e.g. MySQL Database Model

Keep content, logic and presentation separate

Desktop
e.g. Template Mobile Views
Views

e.g. Wordpress Controller

e.g. MySQL Database Model

Wordpress Mobile Pack Plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-
pack/
Selects themes based on the type of user visiting the site.

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language
Transformations)

Content is deﬁned as XML and then XSLT is used,
along with multiple markup languages like HTML,
XHTML, WML, XHTML Basic, XHTML-MP, and so on,
to provide the proper rendering markup for the viewing
context
http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT

Device Independent Authoring Language
(DIAL)

Working draft standard for a markup language for the
ﬁltering and presentation of Web page content available
across different delivery contexts.
intended XML language proﬁle of XHTML2 (also a draft)
http://www.w3.org/TR/dial/

CSS media queries

http://css-tricks.com/6731-css-media-queries/
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/

Detect client capabilities
with Javascript

mo

http://diveintohtml5.org/detect.html#geolocation

Modernizr
Modernizr is a small JavaScript library that detects the
availability of native implementations for next-generation Web
Technologies.

http://www.modernizr.com/

Desktop Web to Mobile Web
What content/functionality from my desktop web site will
be useful on a mobile device?
How will it need to be re-presented so that it works in a mobile
context?
Will it still be familiar to the user once it is re-presented?
What content/functionality will I leave out of the mobile
website?
Will it break?
What extra or enhanced functionality can a mobile
website offer my users that the desktop version does
not?

Desktop Web to Mobile Web
Desktop
Shared functionality,
different presentation

Extended/enhanced
functionality

Mobile

Cipher Cities Desktop Vs Mobile

What are the range of device
capabilities my mobile website
will target?

What devices do my prospective users have?
What devices are capable of providing the
functionality my users will want?
Trade-off of functionality vs. risk of alienating
users with incapable devices

Option 1 - Do Nothing
Desktop version of site is served to mobile devices un-
altered

Option 2 - Multi-Serve
Same page content delivered to mobile and desktop
devices, but CSS and resources (e.g. images) are
tailored to the smaller form factor

Option 3 - Mobile-Speciﬁc
Mobile-speciﬁc content is created and served to mobile
devices.

In practical terms...
A single 500KB webpage will take a minute to download
over a GSM connection.
This is the best case scenario - cell networks almost never
operate near theoretical maximum speeds and this doesn’t
take into account typically high cell network latency and slow
browser rendering speed on low-powered mobile devices.
The same page could be downloaded and rendered in under
a second on a modern desktop browser over a wiﬁ
connection.

Users won’t see what they can’t
be bothered to wait for to display

Most uses ﬁnd wait times more than a few seconds
unacceptable. Tolerance is even less if page refreshes
are frequent or the context is that of an application
where perceived lag will be compared with native apps.

A picture isn’t always worth
a thousand words.
It takes roughly the same amount of space to store a character as
a pixel. Therefore a 70px x 70px image takes as long to
download as 1000 words of text.
Compress your images (duh).
Resolution and colour depth both affect image size. Find out
what the display capabilities of your target devices are and only
serve images of the required dimensions and colour depth.
Many older browsers give the option (often by default) to view
pages without images, so make sure to code your HTML
semantically so it makes sense without them (e.g. include alt-text)

Other speed optimisations
Keep it simple. If it’s not necessary, don’t include it. This includes content
(text/image/audio/video etc.) styles, javascript etc.
This applies to download and rendering speed. Complex stylesheets and
javascript require more CPU time and as a result adversely affect battery life.
Avoid over-pagination. Due to network latency, it may take longer to refresh
the page twice than to load double the content.
Text can be compressed just like images. Always use miniﬁed versions of
code libraries and serve compressed HTML/CSS/Javscript if the browser
supports it.
http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-optimize-your-site-with-gzip-
compression/

Testing mobile websites -
Desktop testing
A good deal of your testing can be done on a desktop
web browser. In the case of modern, webkit mobile
browsers they should effectively render the same.
In the least case you can verify and validate the majority
of HTML, CSS and Javascript and do some functional
testing.
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
You can use iframes to simulate mobile viewports

Testing mobile websites
In an ideal world you would have one of every device
your are targeting to test on.
Try and at least test on one real device that is indicative
of your main target market.
If you can’t afford one, borrow, or even test on demo
devices in store.
Get the users to test for you with their own devices -
provide an easy method for users to give feedback.

Usability Testing

Test with real users in real contexts.
Active - go to the users. Conduct workshops, trials etc.
Passive - provide a way for users to send you
feedback.

Functional Testing

Tests if your implementation is functional - the features/
mechanics of your site.

Contextual Testing
Tests if your design has successfully solved the design problem.
How does the user experience render on the device?
Does it load quickly, correctly? Progress indicators? On wi-ﬁ, 3G, 2G?
Do the physical features of the device work correctly? (keys,
orientation change etc.)
What happens if the device loses its connection? Can it work in ofﬂine
mode and recover once connection is re-established.
Does geolocation provide an acceptable level of accuracy in different
environments?
etc.

Desktop testing

User agent switcher extension for
Firefox - http://chrispederick.com/
work/user-agent-switcher/

Desktop testing

Opera’s small-screen view

Simulators and Emulators

dotMobi emulator - http://mtld.mobi/emulator.php

Mobile Emulators & Simulators
Model Official Platform Type Browser testing Compatibility

Apple iOS Official iOS Simulator Safari Mac

Google Android Official Android Emulator Android Win, Mac, Unix

Nokia Symbian Official Symbian Emulator S60 Browser Win

Windows Phone 7 Official Windows Phone Emulator Internet Explorer Win

BlackBerry Official RIM OS Emulator RIM Browser Win

HP webOS Official webOS Virtual Machine webOS Win, Mac, Unix

Opera Mobile Official multi-platform Simulator Opera Mobile Win, Mac, Unix

Opera Mini Official multi-platform Online Emulator Opera Mini Win, Mac, Unix

Firefox for Mobile Official multi-platform Simulator Firefox Mobile Win, Mac, Unix

https://github.com/shichuan/mobile-html5-boilerplate/wiki/Mobile-Emulators-%26-Simulators

Remote Access to Real Devices

Device Anywhere - http://www.deviceanywhere.com/

The Cipher Cities Mobile
Web Design Process...

Research the Field
Feasibility analysis
Current device capabilities and
future trends
Market saturation
Web mobile usage statistics
Different delivery approaches:
native application vs mobile web
browser

Research the Field

http://www.mobileawesomeness.com/

Workshop Design Ideas and User Case Scenarios

So what did we decide?
Enhanced Play
ability to search and join games on the move
start and stop games
access game descriptions and information

Build tools that took advantage of ‘on site’ building
Messaging

And the cycle continues
User Testing

Feedback

Workshops

Design

Develop

In Conclusion...
Always design for the users
They provide the context for the application of
theoretical design principles
Interface development is an iterative and ongoing
process.
Interface design never goes from idea to resolution in
one step…

Mobile Web Design & Development 2011

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Mobile Web Design & Development 2011