Categories
Sunday

Everything You Wanted to Know about the Mobile Web, But Were Afraid to Ask

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1400

Brian Fling, Dir of Strategy, Blue Flavor

[I am sorry about the poor notes. I was taken in by his cool slides and an attack of ADHD.]

His presentation can be found here: http://www.blueflavor.com/sxsw2007/

Check out:

Mobile web will explode because of LBS (location-based services).
This contextualizes the web to a much higher level.

3 Cs of the mobile web: Cost, content and context

Clickstreams: where on a mobile page will the user go based upon clicks

different screensizes – about 500 different devices sold in the world

Do not design for smart phones or PDA – they are such a small part of the market, currently.

In his presentation, he meant “design vertically” when he says “design horizontally”.

Mobile web standards
XHMTL-MP (Extensible HTML – Mobile Profile) – this is the new WAP (old WAP:bad, new WAP:good)
XHTML and MP are VERY similar – standard tools can work with it.
Wireless CSS is more complicated, but his standard advice is to keep it simple
He recommends doc styles over style sheets because of flashing of the page during loading.

Recommendations:

  • only about 5-7 links per page. This gives you more than enough access keys
  • keep forms to a minimum
  • focus on five devices: treo, razr, nokia 40-series, ,
  • mobile stylesheets can detect devices with the handheld attribute

Testing devices remotely:  deviceanywhere.com