Comments on: dotMobi Mobile Web Developers Guide

By: Grace

Grace — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:38:38 +0000

Hi James
Great list! I work on a service called http://www.zinadoo.com that provides users with an easy to use tool to create a mobile site. All mobile sites created are automatically compliant with .mobi’s style guides, many of which you mentioned above. We’ve a new version due out next Monday (7th) and many of our new features cover some of the site features you’ve mentioned above also (Click to dial, assigning access keys etc)
Would love you to check it out and let us know what you think.
P.S. it’s all free!

By: ucantblamem

ucantblamem — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:21:31 +0000

@lee - to answer your questions:

1. While some of the “Desktop” companies we’re familiar with like Microsoft and Opera do offer Mobile browsers, there isn’t really a majority stakeholder like IE6 in the Mobile environment (yet). By default, most phones will have a browser built by the Manufacturer. So, what we have is a number of different browsers (think one per manufacturer), which all have enough market share to warrant adequate testing. To make matters worse, on the desktop we’re used to having periodic updates that we can simply download, but there is no viable mechanism like this for phones. The result is that every new phone gets the latest version of the browser, which means: Multiple browsers (from multiple manufacturers), with multiple versions of each out in the wild - all of which have similar market share. GOOD TIMES HUH? :P

Luckily, thanks to the WAP standards, their rendering engines are pretty basic/similar.

2. Yes and no. If you’re a standards-based developer who knows that “Pixel-perfection” is a dead religion, then you’re probably not going to have any issues. There are many different resolutions, some portrait and some landscape, so text will wrap etc… The only major issue you’ll want to avoid is images being too large for small devices. Images should be used sparingly anyway, but if you keep them less than 120 pixels wide, you shouldn’t have any troubles in about 99% of cases.

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:55:34 +0000

Great to see a shorter put together list of items to pay attention to when it comes to the development of pages for mobiles. I think a lot of those items would come from learning from your mistakes more then anything.

Whilst I have never delged into the mobile websites side of things, its something I think I may be having to look into down the track. Whilst in my opinion this isn’t a high enough demand for it at the moment to justify the learning time in it I think that you already having the experience with would work as a great aide for you down the track if/when mobile websites really start to take off.

Some questions:

1. There’s obviously different browsers out there for different phones (mine using IE as standard [windows mobile] and have seen Opera taking some good share), do you encounter as many browser differences as you do in a ‘real’ web environment as you do in the mobile environment.

2. Screen resolutions, phones have different resolutions just like computers, do these have a great affect on the design of these mobile websites?