mobiForge Recent Content

HTML5 for the Mobile Web - Part I: Introduction

ruadhan — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:57:05 +0000

There has been much interest lately around HTML5 and its readiness for production environments and whether HTML5 apps should be used over native apps. This has been due, in large part, to the high-profile defections of tech behemoths such as Facebook and LinkedIn away from HTML5 to native apps for their core mobile services.

Facebook Home, Google and Android: who wins and who loses?

Veruska Anconitano — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:27:16 +0000

After the Overview of Facebook Home and how to install it on Android, it's time to have a look at Facebook Home from a business and developer perspective.

From a strategic point of view, Facebook Home certainly has the potential to capture Android users, divert them away from Google’s services and draw them closer to the Facebook platform. So it is certainly a threat to Google in that it reduces Android’s flexibility, and therefore the strength of Google’s position.

Overview of Facebook Home and how to install on Android

Veruska Anconitano — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:31:48 +0000

Facebook Home made a big splash late last month, but early indications show that users are far from considering this a "revolution" despite smartphone users around the world spending 18% of their time on Facebook.

Tracking mobile with Google Analytics

mclancy — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:45:39 +0000

Mobile is becoming more important by the day and the figures speak for themselves: about 1 page out of every 8 was viewed using a mobile device (including tablets and phones) according to recent comScore research and last month Google released a study which showed that 77% of mobile searches were performed at home or at work even if a desktop PC was available.

Usability on the mobile Web: best practices and guidelines for designers and developers

Editor — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:24:33 +0000

In this era of technology, we are continuously interacting with things so it is vital that these interactions form positive experiences for us. This is true not only for objects or products we can physically touch, but equally so for intangibles such as websites.

The most common mistakes in smartphone sites according to Google

Veruska Anconitano — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:46:46 +0000

Google are paying ever more attention to the mobile market and so, developers pay attention when the Big G is making recommendations. Google recently published a document on the main mistakes people make when working on mobile websites for smartphones. If you look through the list you can definitely recognize a cornerstone of Google's approach: focus on the end user. Or put another way, "adopt the approach you want but be aware of your audience".

Global reach and dynamic page weight – is there a correlation?

ronan — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:52:09 +0000

Many reports on web page sizes issued in recent years point to the same conclusion: the web has a weight problem. The web seems to be gaining weight each year despite the fact that study after study has shown a strongly negative reaction from users to heavy web pages and resulting loading times.

Why HTML5 still presents some problems on mobile

Veruska Anconitano — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:14:46 +0000

One of the debates of 2013 centres on which approach you should adopt to deliver a great user experience, while keeping costs at an acceptable level. This question often gets parsed as “HTML5 or native applications?” or “HTML or mobile site builders” or even something else entirely. But with all the vaunted promise of HTML5, just what does that ‘5’ mean when it comes to real world deployments?

Why Responsive Web Design is not always the best option for a mobile SEO strategy

Veruska Anconitano — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:27:57 +0000

There are a lot of misconceptions about what Google is saying about mobile SEO. First and foremost, Google doesn't mandate the use of Responsive Web Design (RWD) as best practice for SEO. Google expressly says "Google does not favor any particular URL format as long as they are all accessible to both Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile” the bots Google uses to crawl desktop and Smartphone specific content. And it’s worth noting here that Google is crawling desktop and mobile content separately.

Performance is money, part 1: the end-user's wallet

ronan — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:43:44 +0000

Most web developers are familiar with the maxim that light is good: the idea that page performance matters to the end user experience is a truism at this point, backed up by a tremendous amount of real-world evidence, summarised quite nicely at websiteoptimization.com.

BB10 tutorial: create Web apps that seamlessly integrate BlackBerry 10 native functions

BlackBerryLuca — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:49:28 +0000

The much-anticipated BlackBerry 10 operating system is already creating a splash with customers, analysts and developers alike. In this tutorial, BlackBerry developer evangelist Luca Sale teaches us how to develop a Web app for the new OS that hooks into the native functions of BlackBerry devices such as the camera and the ever-popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

From 0 to BlackBerry 10

Developing custom pictograms for the mobile Web

casaise — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:11:04 +0000

A matter of trade-offs

Pictograms – miniature graphical representations of states, actions and objects – made their way into the mobile Web over 15 years ago. Several normalized (UNICODE, WAP) and proprietary (Japanese emojis, Openwave) mechanisms are in place to enrich Web applications with pre-defined images.

An introduction to Firefox OS for mobile developers: Q&A with Andreas Gal, Mozilla

AndreasGal_Mozilla — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:04:25 +0000

With the first device manufacturers expected to launch Firefox OS devices at Mobile World Congress this month and with major network operators inline to release them to consumers in early 2013, Mozilla’s new operating system (OS) is starting to make waves. Firefox OS is open-source, Linux-based and Web-friendly. mobiForge gets the low-down from Mozilla’s vice president of mobile engineering, Andreas Gal.

Q1. What is Firefox OS?

HTML5 for mobile developers

SantthoshSelvadurai — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:13:58 +0000

Why HTML5 and why now?

When it comes to touch-screen mobile devices, native applications have led the way in terms of performance, speed and tighter integration to specific platforms. Unbound by the need to conform to standards, native apps could rapidly take advantage of the latest hardware and operating system innovations, while Web technologies always had to wait for the international community to agree and implement standards first. But with the HTML5 specification coming to fruition, browser-based mobile apps are rapidly catching up with the natives.

Consuming JSON services in Android apps

weimenglee — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:39:05 +0000

Unless you are writing a Hello World Android application, chances are your application would need to connect to the outside world to fetch some data, such as live currency exchange rates, weather information, records from databases, etc. One of the easiest ways for your application to connect to the outside world is to use web services.

For the past few years, XML web services have dominated the arena for web services, as XML was touted as the ubiquitous medium for data exchange. However, using XML as the medium for your data payload suffers from the following problems:

Lightweight accordions & sliders with jQuery Mobile

mdagruma — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:23:26 +0000

Mobile developers are commonly confronted with clients who want everything – all the content and features – on their PC site crammed into the mobile site, rather than going for a streamlined mobile site. That might sound like a recipe for bloated code and a poor user experience – neither of which is acceptable on a mobile device – but it needn’t be, as long as mobile developers emphasize ingenuity over excess functionality. That’s where jQuery accordion menus and sliders come in very useful and, if used cleverly, they can help keep the mobile experience lean and mean.

A Guide to Using Pictograms in Mobile Applications

casaise — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:37:15 +0000

A long-standing feature

Developers inspecting the user agent profile of a modern handset like the Motorola XT682 ATRIX TV may be surprised to discover the following ImageCapable declaration which indicates whether a device can display images or not:

<prf:ImageCapable>Yes</prf:ImageCapable>

Introducing Prism, a tool for testing device adaptation

ronan — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:20:43 +0000

Due to the multifarious nature of the mobile web, developers tend to spend a lot of time testing their work. If your site is designed to adapt to multiple different devices this effort is multiplied because you need to ensure that your detection is working correctly across multiple devices and that your response is appropriate in each case.

Using HTML5 application cache in mobile Web apps

AndreaMoretti — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:46:58 +0000

One of the most interesting features of HTML5 is support for application cache. Every Web browser has a built-in cache that stores recently visited Web pages. This means the same pages and assets will load faster the next time the browser returns. At every subsequent call, the browser checks the timestamp to determine whether to reload the assets from the server or serve the cached versions.

Sense and sensor-bility: access mobile device sensors with JavaScript

DenOdell — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:43:22 +0000

Just as we humans call upon our senses to provide us with data about our environment, so smartphones and tablet devices use their own digital senses – touchscreen, geolocation, orientation, direction and motion – to provide interaction and to tailor applications and games to the user and their real-world surroundings.

Why mobile Web accessibility matters - best practices to make your mobile site accessible

soederquist — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:16:27 +0000

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web.

This mantra is as true for the mobile Web as it is for the desktop Web. Over a billion people worldwide live with some kind of disability, and 285 million have visual impairments (39 million are blind and 246 have low vision), according to World Health Organization (WHO). Given these numbers, what excuses are there for bad design practices that shut users out who are visually impaired and/or rely on assistive technologies?

What does JavaScript bring to the mobile HTML5 and CSS3 party?

OrenFarhi — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:02:49 +0000

JavaScript brings the mobile Web to life. It brings interactivity to HTML5 and CSS3 mobile Web apps.
This Q&A with Oren Farhi, front-end architect and JavaScript expert, explores what JavaScript does for mobile sites/apps and when, where, how and why it should be used … and when it shouldn’t.

Anatomy of a mobile web experience: facebook.com

ronan — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:08:25 +0000

This is the second article in a series about how the major internet brands deliver their mobile web experience. The previous article is available here: Anatomy of a mobile web experience: google.com

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

Future of the Mobile Web Whitepaper

mclancy — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:46:11 +0000

We're very happy to publish this paper arising from the The Future of the Mobile Web event held at the Dublin Convention Centre in January 2012. We covered a lot of ground and the paper is a serious attempt to capture all the topics covered from HTML5 to responsive design to device detection and many others. We found it to be a very worthwhile process to listen, validate our ideas and learn from others in the process of writing it. We hope it is useful to a wider readership also.

Future of the Mobile Web

mclancy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:13:12 +0000

Last week we hosted an event loftily entitled "The Future of the Mobile Web" at the Dublin Convention Centre.

Server-side device detection used by 82% of Alexa top 100 sites

ronan — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:53:12 +0000

About 82% of the Alexa 100 top sites use some form of server-side device detection to serve content on their main website entry point. As you descend from the top 10 to the top 25 and top 100 sites the percentage of sites using server-side detection falls from 100% to 96% to 82%. This is an interesting fact given the all of the recent discussion in the blogosphere of responsive design using client-side techniques such as media queries.

Future of the Mobile Web: Request for submissions

mclancy — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:35:53 +0000

Dear mobiForge community,

We have invited a number of colleagues and opinion formers from across several different verticals to a forum event in Dublin on January 26th next to discuss some of the most pressing issues, trends, opportunities and challenges in today’s mobile web environment. People from companies like Adobe, Cloud Four, Nokia, Yiibu and others will be coming along.

The idea is to build towards a consensus on current technology, facts, fictions and opportunities of the mobile web in an environment that is increasingly noisy and hype filled.

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:

Displaying Status Bar Notifications in Android

weimenglee — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:59:05 +0000

Developers of Android are no doubt familiar with the Toast class, which displays a little pop-up containing whatever message you want to display to the user. However, the Toast pop-up will automatically dismiss itself after a while, making it useful as a tool to provide timely feedback to the user (such as informing the user that a file has been saved successfully), but not a really good tool to use for some asynchronous action (such as telling the user that an incoming SMS message has arrived).

The best of breakingdevelopment conference

ronan — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:45:40 +0000

As many of you know, the breakingdevelopment conference took place in Nashville, Tennessee over the last few days. It appears to have been a really seminal conference with 13 leading mobile web developers speaking.

Others have already put together summaries of the conference but I thought I'd link to what I thought were the most interest presentations.

Importing & Exporting Documents in iOS

weimenglee — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:13:57 +0000

One of the common tasks that an iOS developer has to do is to import or export documents from his iOS application. For example, suppose you are developing a document reader and you want to allow the user to import documents into your application so that it can be read offline. Also, your reader might also support the exporting of documents so that other applications can make use of the document.

In this article, I will walk you through the different techniques you can employ to allow documents to be imported or exported from your iOS application.

Creating the Project

Preserving User Preferences in Android Applications

weimenglee — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:32:04 +0000

Often you need to store personalized information for each user of your application. For example, your application may require users to logon to a secure server for authentication. In this case, the user needs to supply his credentials, such as a login name and a password. The first time the user uses your application this information will be entered by the user, but subsequently it would be useful for your application to “remember” this information somewhere so that it can save the user the trouble of entering the same information every time he uses your application.

Device Diversity

ronan — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:08:36 +0000

As dotMobi brings DeviceAtlas to the cloud Ronan Cremin, Director of Engineering at dotMobi, charts the increasing complexity of the device landscape for developers in the first of two pieces looking at device fragmentation.

In the beginning the web was a much simpler place. By the time the web was becoming a mainstream media in the late 1990’s there was only one device through which you accessed it: the humble desktop PC, running one of just a handful of browsers.

Responding To Inbound SMS Messages

mokil — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:50:52 +0000

In our last article, we created the basis of a messaging system, allowing us to receive inbound messages using keywords and shortcodes. We’ve also previously seen how we can send SMS messages. It’s time to bring everything together and create a simple messaging system that can process inbound SMS messages and send back responses to those messages.

The Current System

Web Access in Windows Phone 7 Apps

weimenglee — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:02:25 +0000

In previous articles, I have shown how easy it is to get started in Windows Phone 7 programming using Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows Phone Developer Tools. In this third installment of the series, I will continue the exploration of Windows Phone development. This time I will focus on one key development topic: Web access. Unless you are writing a Hello World application, chances are that your application will need to connect to the outside world.

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.

Receiving SMS Messages via Shortcodes & Keywords

mokil — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:31:14 +0000

Back around 1998, more and more billboards started to display some odd messages, along the lines of "Visit us on the web at www.companyname.com". This was a major shift in advertising and gave marketers another avenue to explore. It was, of course, the beginning of the Internet's move from academia to the mainstream, and the proliferation of Web sites seemed to happen almost overnight.

Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Development

weimenglee — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:49:50 +0000

By now, you should already have heard of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. And while many developers are busy developing for Android and iPhone, Microsoft is hard at work, developing its killer mobile OS that could give the competitors a run for the money. Before you dismiss Microsoft as a serious contender in the mobile space, think again. The new OS is now a total rewrite of the older Windows Mobile platform, and sports many features that you have come to expect of a modern mobile operating system.

DeviceAtlas & jQueryMobile

daniel.hunt — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 06:00:00 +0000

The first Alpha release of jQueryMobile was announced today, to great fanfare, and the mobile web world is already on fire with the thoughts of what this will mean to them.

A little bit of background...

Originally developed by John Resig, jQueryMobile's big brother "jQuery" is now in use by pretty much anyone who implements advanced JavaScript capabilities on their site.