For more than 3 years we have been producing mobile specific modules and skins/templates for the DotNetNuke platform and occasionally for other platforms. When we first started this path the king of mobile devices that was used for browsing was just Apple iPhone and other devices were still in WAP mode and therefore, were not man enough to even consider them.

Gradually we were asked to also ensure that others like Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Mobile Linux, Symbian OS, the BlackBerry platform, and Android should also be supported. Since the majority of users until 2009 were still iOS, we cared little about the rest of the gang. however, now the landscape is changing. Here are the European Stats since most of our customers are from Europe.

On top of the complexeties of having to cater for veriaty of mobile OSs we also have to consider that on each of them the users are gaining choice of browsers. For example Opera is available for iOS, I have not checked others but I am sure they there are simmilar story with other browsers if not now most certainly in near future.
Mobile Browser Trends by Salar Golestanian

Mobile Browser Trends by Salar Golestanian

Then there is the consideration of where is the customer aiming their site for. For example Europe is still mainly dominated by iOS and Safari whilst in North America Blackbury & Android are catching up fast. Windows Mobile 7 is too early to consier yet.

For other statistics this one is interesting from the Juniper Report Forecasts for the number of mobile web users tell that they will grow from 577 million in 2008 to more than 1.7 billion in 2013. This is probably becuase more and more users are embracing collaborative web 2.0 standards including social networking that capitalizes on user-generated content, location-based services and instant message. Whilst the fastest growing markets will remain to be Far East and China but the greatest potential for developers remains to be South America.

With those kinds of numbers, it’s very important for us web designers and developers learn best development and design practices for mobile devices. Since there aren’t a lot of differences between Standard Web and Mobile Web development Technologies, therefore, we don’t need to learn any new technologies for mobile site design and development.

However, there are some considerations that Mobile Web is more restrictive than design for standard browsers. Therefore, we have to apply work around the issues that mobile device restrictions present. We also need to ensure the mobile sites are more user-friendly and useful than the standard web sites because Mobile users have less time and use their fingers than the fine point computer mouse. In general some clever creative problem-solving skills are required and I try and list some of them below.

Make your mobile site simple both in design, content and functionalities.
Bottom line is that the only way we can manage this complex landscape, is to Simplify our design implementation for the mobile sites.

When coding your site, ensure you use valid minimalist Mark-up
As I said earlier since we need to deal with different Operating systems as well as different browsers accessing the web site. Using accepted web standards becomes very important. Whilst standard PC browsers have the cpu power to be forgiving, in mobile world they are not so good.

Ensure users can escape and visit your real site.
As an iPad owner, I get very frustrated when I go to a web site that iPad is perfectly capable to brows the standard wide format website, and the site forces me to go and see a 300px wide mobile version of the site with absolutly no option to go to the main site. A lot of new mobile devices with large HD screen are perfectly capable to view a 960px wide page in landscape mode. For this reason we have changed our mobile device detector for DotNetNuke platform to allow fine control on what browsers are pushed to mobile domain. For example see iphone.salaro.com and see in the footer area there is a link to take the user to a page other than home page that has the mobile redirect module.

Use separate Mobile Themes to your main site.
A good example is www.properties.co.uk and iphone.properties.co.uk where only lidmited brand identety concept is borrowed from main to mobile site. Infact we have only borrowed colours and the logo.

Don't use Pop-Ups in your mobile browser.
Our job as far as skinning or templating your site ends when we hand over the template and customer becomes responsible for content placements. So we always recomend them not to use popup as it interfere with browser specific experience.

Reduce the use of images and no Flash.
If you have to then ensure the size is sufficiently small so it does not affect your 320px wide mobile users.

Optimize your menu and general navigation methods.
On Mobile devices or tablets, people use their fingers. Therefore, the clickable areas need to be large enough and they need sufficient paddign between links. In DotNetNuke world, Telerik offers the best Mobile support so long the designer has taken care of this fact and the site owner ensures that top parent navigation is limited to just a few.

Spend time to borrow as much content from the main site as possible.
Nothign is more paiful than going to a mobile site only to find just a basic content and never be able to switch to the main site for the content that I need. Dont make this mistake as you will be wastign your time by creating the mobile site in the first place as it just made the mobile user really mad.

Redirect must be done right.
If you are not using a dynamic redirect that detects the mobile user on page load, then ensure that essential landing pages from users search criteria is covered and those pages in the main site must have links to the mobile site in a easy to find place. See our mobile phone redirect and in the new one we give you the choice of pointing every mobile device including iPad to the mobile site or do it a little more delicately. Remember this is only for DotNetNuke portals.

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About Scifiwood News Reviews and Blogs

These are various short and long News Articles, Reviews and Blogs by Salar Golestanian and employees of SalarO.com as well as contributors of Scifiwood.com. The subject matter are mixed topics with Pure Science to Science Fiction as well as general topics on Web Trends, Technology, Software Engineering genre, or whatever subject that can affect the convergence of today's technology with Science Fiction in any shape or form. These Blogs and Reviews don't have commercial or corporate aspiration, so they are indeed completely independent views. Some of these entries may be short and just link you to the actual news or site that can expand further on the subject of interest. In Phase II we plan to incorporate some Social Networking applications within the portal.