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Everyone by now realizes that the Mobile Web is growing to be much bigger than the original Web as may be viewed on a Desktop PC. Since so many web designers have spent many years honing their web design skills on full screen websites, it is not surprising that some are now appreciating that they should design so that regular web pages still give a satisfactory user experience when viewed on a mobile device. After all, that is the thrust of the One Web Principle, which is a fundamental pillar of the Mobile Web Initiative. Even though there is no strong evidence that website designers are now applying the One Web Principle, it still seems to carry weight.

A strong confirmation of the One Web Principle would be to hear that web designers for mobile sites, such as those to be found on dotMobi domains, were making sure that their websites would give a satisfactory user experience on desktop PCs. This is not the case. Indeed an excellent presentation (PDF) by Brian Fling of BlueFlavor.com at SXSW2007 points us in quite the reverse direction. Designing for all the diverse types of mobile device is most easily met by having related web pages designed to provide the best user-experience for each of the mobile devices. This is what has been defined here as the Multi-Web practice.

Now dotMobi has issued its Mobile Web Developer Guide (PDF), which is a very meaty compendium of advice for anyone designing websites for mobile devices. It is authored by Ronan Cremin, Jo Rabin, Brian Fling and D. Keith Robinson. It can be heartily recommended for anyone designing web pages for mobile devices.

The Guide early on makes the point that it is the website visitors who determine whether a mobile website will be a success:

User-centered design is a popular and smart way to approach interaction design. Understanding the needs of users helps humanize the process and keeps your project in check with their goals. Users know best and will cast their vote by giving their attention to your site - or not.

It should almost be a no-brainer that working on a cell phone screen will be different from a full-sized screen for a desktop PC.

An important difference between developing for mobile and developing for the desktop is creating the right flow of information for the user. Due to the limited screen size, the mobile designer might need to spread out information into multiple pages rather than present it on one page. A well-designed click stream is an important concept in mobile design and development.

The W3C has laid down a Default Delivery Context, which is in a sense a Lowest Common Denominator approach to web design:

Working to the capabilities of the W3C Default Delivery Context should ensure that a site will work with most existing browsers but remember that a better experience can be provided by recognizing the device and using its capabilities.
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One way to approach this problem is to focus on five classes of devices that span a range of capabilities. Of the hundreds of devices available, supporting five mainstream devices makes a great place to start. Here is an example:
o A Nokia Series 40
o A Motorola V series, (v3 aka RAZR, v600, v500, etc.)
o A modern Samsung and/or LG device
o A Smart Phone, like Nokia s60 (or Series 60)
o A PDA, like a Treo or Windows Mobile device

So the principle is established that different web pages may be available for different devices:

dotMobi sites sometimes use a separate server or virtual host, separating desktop sites from mobile sites on the same server.

The Guide does state that this has a disadvantage as compared with the One Web Principle, if that was workable:

The major drawback of this approach is that it separates the mobile content into an area of its own, making it hard to share bookmarks between mobile and desktop devices. It also makes it hard for mobile users to reach the desktop experience if they want or need to.
..
A unified approach attempts to address the drawbacks of the redirection approach by overlaying the URLs that apply to the various experiences onto each other. This way, bookmarks can be shared between the desktop and mobile. Pages that don’t apply to one experience can redirect to pages that do apply.

That is certainly one approach. Another is to have bookmark vectors (AGIs) that point to the array of associated web pages, as is discussed elsewhere on this website.

All in all, there is a great deal of realism in the approach set out in the dotMobi Mobile Web Developer Guide. Hopefully it will be eagerly sought out and will help to improve the Mobile web experience.

Related: Mobile Device Detection

Tags: Mobile, Cellphone

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Posts from the Archives You May Enjoy

• December 16, 2007 -- Speech Technology Will Be Really Big - Watch Google
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• March 10, 2007 -- Cell Phones - The Ultimate Challenge For The One Web Principle
• July 26, 2006 -- iLane, iPhone .. whatever next?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 17th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Cell phones, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.