Ruadhán O'Donoghue

February 7, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

Images such as bitmaps have an intrinsic pixel size. Telling the browser in advance what the size is avoids it having to re-flow the page when it receives it. Resizing images at the server reduces the amount of data transferred and the amount of processing the client has to carry out to scale the image... Read More

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February 6, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

Device detection is the first step in performing content adaptation. Here we cover lightweight device detection using classic ASP (VBScript). This is based on the PHP version found here. It is a simple script which will detect most mobile browsers. However, if you need more information about the properties of the device such as screen width and height, image format support etc. so that you can tailor your content to specific devices, then you need something more than this. In this case you should consider using a full device properties database such as DeviceAtlas... Read More

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February 4, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

Avoiding pixel and absolute measures allows the browser to adapt content to fit the display, though there are exceptions to this rule (see below). This test checks for the use of absolulte and pixel measures where relative measures would be more appropriate... Read More

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February 3, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

A while back Ronan blogged about the stifling effect of data charges on the growth of the mobile Internet. Well since then, 3 launched their X-Series flat-rate data package, and people got excited. This was a great development and a possible catalyst for the widespread penetration of mobile Internet usage. Surely the other operators would have to follow suit with similar competitive data plans... Read More

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February 1, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

This test determines if your page uses tables. Tables do not work well on limited size screens and may result in the user having to scroll horizontally to read them. Putting navigational links into tables may result in the user having both to scroll horizontally and vertically to see possible navigational choices. ... Read More

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January 31, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

This test attempts to determines if your page is using tables for layout purposes. Tables should be used to present tabular data, rather than to control the layout of a page. The problems associated with using tables for layout are well documented. In particular, they generally require more markup and take longer to render than acheiving the same with CSS... Read More

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January 24, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

This test determines if your page make use of nested tables. Mobile devices often cannot display nested tables correctly. When a mobile device is capable of displaying nested tables, the computations required to render the tables can consume lot of CPU and add to the display time for the page... Read More

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January 23, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

This test determines how many externally linked resources your page relies on. Linked resources include images, stylesheets and other objects. Each externally linked resource requires a separate request across the network. This may add a significant amount to the page load time in the mobile context. ... Read More

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January 4, 2008, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

Frames are not supported on many mobile devices, and using them may have unpredictable results. Frames are also considered as being generally problematic. This test checks that your page does not use frames... Read More

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December 11, 2007, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue

We have just published another extract from Cameron Moll's excellent book, Mobile Web Design. (Thanks Cameron!) In this next installment from the chapter "Beyond Simple XHTML Pages", topics covered include SVG, Flash Lite, and Location Awareness. Feels like a bit of an SVG-fest here lately, but as Ronan points out, maybe quite a few of us could be paying more attention to this technology... Read More

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