Mobile

Oct 20, 2010

Rethinking the Mobile Web

Phil Powell Mobile, Web 0 Comment

Fascinating stuff at yiibu, where they are questioning the traditional approach to mobile web development:

While this approach may be considered entirely sensible to the majority of folks in the mobile world, this isn’t necessarily the case for those coming from the more traditional (aka desktop) web world. The current approach can be so confusing, frustrating and discouraging that it’s no surprise desktop web developers ultimately focus on optimising their sites for just one device – the iPhone.

I think this rings true: I think most web shops consider optimising a site for iPhone is the same as optimising for the whole mobile ecosystem.

Given all of this, we began to wonder if it was now time to rethink the way we’ve been designing mobile websites. Could there be a straight-forward approach, simply building upon existing knowledge, rather than requiring designers and developers to learn entirely new and unique methods of working–specifically for the mobile web?

As a result of this, they’ve developed a site which acts as a proof of concept for the ideas and concepts they’re developing, which is explained in much more detail. They’ve also colelcted together a phenomenal amount of mobile reference materials and resources.

Sep 2, 2010

Flash is not a de facto standard technology

Phil Powell Accessibility, Mobile, Web 0 Comment

John Gruber continues to hammer home the reasons why Apple’s abandonment of Flash on mobile and touch devices is a good thing for web standards:

If no one releases a popular web browsing platform that lacks Flash support, then web sites that already publish Flash content are never going to move away from it. I think the web would be a far better place without Flash, or, at least, with Flash relegated to a position like that of Java applets: there if you want it, but not a major foundation.

Flash is never going to decrease in popularity so long as all web browsers support it. Flash might decrease in popularity because of iOS. If you believe that Flash’s current position as a de facto standard technology is harmful to the web, then users — not just iOS users but everyone using the web — would benefit if that happens.

I don’t think Flash is quite as evil as some commentators make out – it can be a powerful tool. But I agree that it needs to be repositioned: less as a standard web technology, and more as a bespoke application platform. So much of the stuff people use Flash for can now be achieved almost effortlessly with modern Javascript frameworks and clever use of CSS. I’ve yet to see a practical example of where Flash could be applied to applications on a mobile device.

Aug 26, 2010

Motorola acquires 280 North. But why?

Phil Powell Applications, Mobile, Web 0 Comment

280 North wowed people with the creation of their web application framework Cappuccino, which is built on an impressive new programming language, Objective-J. The whole framework is modelled on desktop development with Objective-C for Mac OS X, and it can do some pretty amazing stuff – it’s like Cocoa but for the web.

Techcrunch report that 280 North has been acquired by Motorola for a whopping $20 million, quoting a Motorola spokesperson:

“I can confirm that Motorola acquired 280 North earlier this summer. The transaction provides Motorola with specialized web-app engineering talent and technology that will help facilitate the continued expansion of Motorola’s application ecosystem. We believe 280 North will be instrumental in helping us continue to foster the Android ecosystem with innovative web-based technologies and applications.”

I really don’t understand the logic behind this acquisition, and suspect it could mean the end of the great open-source work that 280 North have done.

  1. Motorola are committed to developing for the Android platform, so why acquire technology which is so intrinsically tied to the Mac platform? Objective-J is essentially a webified version of Objective-C; the look-and-feel of Cappuccino’s UI elements are based on the Mac UI, and the development tools feel just like Mac apps.
  2. Cappuccino’s aim was to bring the ease of developing desktop applications to the web: it’s about creating web applications which feel like desktop applications. Motorola have very firmly positioned themselves in the mobile market, so why the interest in web applications which feel like desktop applications? Even if they are branching out into the development of tablet devices for the home, surely it makes sense to develop technology for a touch UI? Touch is not what Cappuccino is about – Sproutcore is way ahead of the game in this area.

I’m ready to be proven wrong, but this seems like a knee-jerk acquisition. This isn’t about acquiring 280 North as a viable company, or Cappuccino as a platform for further development – it’s about acquiring the clever brains behind this web app framework for Motorola’s bespoke purposes. It’s right there in that Motorola statement: “the transaction provides Motorola with specialized web-app engineering talent”.

Aug 14, 2010

Announcing the jQuery Mobile Project

Phil Powell Mobile, Web 0 Comment

John Resig on the forthcoming jQuery mobile project:

The jQuery project is really excited to announce the work that we’ve been doing to bring jQuery to mobile devices. Not only is the core jQuery library being improved to work across all of the major mobile platforms, but we’re also working to release a complete, unified, mobile UI framework.

This looks great, and with a track record of delivering solid, well-documented code, this is going to be a welcome addition to the jQuery family. A unified approach to mobile web UI is desperately needed, and sounds like they are going to be targeting a wide range of platforms:

The critical difference with our approach is the wide variety of mobile browsers we’re targeting with jQuery Mobile. We’ve been working hard at bringing jQuery support to all mobile browsers that are sufficiently-capable and have at least a nominal amount of market share. In this way we’re treating mobile web browsers exactly how we treat desktop web browsers.

And, they’re approaching the visual design in a good way: talking in terms of “design language”:

From a design perspective, we have a unique challenge because we need a universal design system that will feel “right” on a broad range of devices instead of directly mimicking the design style of a particular platform.

To that end, we aim to synthesize a touch-friendly design language that can work well across a range of form factors from smartphone to tablet and a range of mobile platforms. A new ThemeRoller tool will be developed that will allow designers and developers to quickly design a custom theme that fits their color scheme and style to make a highly branded experience possible across all devices and browsers.

It’s worth reading the entire strategy statement.

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