mobiForge Articles Feed - Section: Designing

Anatomy of a mobile web experience: google.com

ronan — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:44:40 +0000

In a recent blog post that I did here on mobiForge (Server-side device detection used by 82% of Alexa top 100 sites) some people expressed surprise that a 47 byte difference in the HTML payload delivered by Google to different devices constituted a significant level of server-side adaptation. On checking my results, it turned out that this minor 47 byte file size difference actually masks an entirely different HTML document served to

Mobile web content adaptation techniques

ronan — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:20:17 +0000

Introduction

This article will help you pick from amongst the many techniques for building a mobile website. It doesn't describe how to do it, rather it instead tries to help you to pick the right approach. Before we begin it's worth clarifying exactly what the goal of the exercise is. Generally speaking, people who are looking to build a mobile site fall into two categories. They're either:

Building Location Service Apps in Windows Phone 7

weimenglee — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:39:33 +0000

In my previous article on Windows Phone 7 development, I showed how you can quickly get started using Visual Studio 2010 together with the Windows Phone Developer Tools. In this second article in the series, I will discuss a topic that is garnering a lot of interest in recent years -location services. Location services usually involve two key components - getting your location data and displaying your location on a map. Hence in this article, I will first show you how to display a map in your Windows Phone 7 application and then use the Location Service APIs to obtain your current position.

Using the PopoverView in iPad App Development

weimenglee — Thu, 13 May 2010 08:51:12 +0000

In the previous article, we saw how to develop a new type of application known as the Split View-based application on the iPad. And one of the new views introduced for the iPad is the PopoverView, which you had a quick glimpse of it in action in the previous article. In this article, I will show you how you can use the PopoverView in your iPad application, not just in a Split View-based application.

Getting Started with the PopoverView

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 4: Even More Views

weimenglee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:13:12 +0000

In this final installation of the Android Views series of articles, we shall continue our exploration of another category of views - Menu views, and some additional cool views. The views discussed include:

Context Menu
Options Menu
AnalogClock
DigitalClock
WebView

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 3: More Views

weimenglee — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:59:23 +0000

In the previous article, you saw the various basic views such as the TextView, EditText, Button, and how you can use them in your Android applications. In this article, we shall continue our exploration of another three categories of views - Picker views, List views, and Display views. The views discussed include:

TimePicker view
DatePicker view
ListView view
Spinner view
Gallery view
ImageView
ImageSwitcher view
GridView view

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 2: Views

weimenglee — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:31:47 +0000

In the previous article on Android UI you saw the components that make up the UI of an Android application. The basic unit of the Android UI is the View. A View represents a widget that has an appearance on the screen. In this article (and the next two), you will learn about the various common views that you would likely use in your journey of Android development. In particular, I have categorized the views in this series into the following group:

Basic Views - commonly-used views such as TextView, EditText, and Button views

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 1: Layouts

weimenglee — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:13:47 +0000

So far in my previous few articles on Android I have focused on showing you how to get things done in Android without really spending too much time discussing the visual aspect of Android application development - User Interface design. In this article, and the next, I will walk you through the various elements that make up the UI of an Android application. In this first part of the article, I will discuss the various layouts available in Android to position the various widgets on your screen.

Effective Design for Multiple Screen Sizes

bryanrieger — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:32:43 +0000

So you're a designer and have been tasked with the design of a mobile web site. Chances are, unless you're designing for only one device you're quickly going to be faced with a common problem experienced by designers who work with mobile devices; figuring out what screen size to actually design for.

For instance:

A Very Modern Mobile Switching Algorithm - Part II

James Pearce — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:20:03 +0000

This article follows on from last month's Part I, where we discussed some of the principles of handling mobile users and switching their experiences. If you haven't read it yet please do so before we dive into some of the technical ideas and implementation details.