Tag Archives: Mobile Device

Mobile Device Screen Resolution – here’s looking at you

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As might have been expected, mobile device screens keep getting smaller even though desktop monitor screens get bigger.  That paradox is one that is difficult to avoid.  Mobile devices are becoming ever more popular and must be highly transportable.  That gives you two problems

  • The keyboard
  • The screen

The keyboard is an easy one to resolve since voice control can provide an ideal input method.  Indeed smart phones are designed to handle voices so what could be better.

The screen is an entirely different problem.  It might appear that mobile web pages must be small.  However desktop screens show what the user really wants.  Much more information and much more interactivity with a higher content of a whole variety of multimedia experiences.

What could be the answer?  Perhaps the words of that Peter Gabriel song may give a clue, In Your Eyes.

If you consider that difficult to believe, consider the words of an informed spectator of the digital world.  Robert X. Cringely suggests that the solution is Pictures in Our Heads.  He too sees a huge growth for mobile devices since the purchasing cycle is rapid and new technology comes along very fast.  Reluctantly he accepts the voice control approach to inputting data as we struggle with an ever diminishing keyboard.

Where he opens up a whole new way of thinking is when it comes to that mobile screen.

We’re at the point right now where primitive single-pixel displays can be built into contact lenses.  They act as user interfaces for experimental devices like automatic insulin pumps.  This already exists.  A patch of carbon nanotubes on your arm continuously monitor blood glucose levels, driving a pump that keeps your insulin supply right where it should be.  Any problem with the pump or the levels is shown by a red dot that appears in your field of view courtesy of that contact lens.  The data connection between pump and eyeball is wireless. The power to run that display is wireless too, since the contact lens display scavenges RF energy out of the air to run, courtesy of that mobile phone on your belt and that WiFi access point on the ceiling.

While that display is a single pixel today, we can pretty easily predict at what point it could be the equivalent of HDTV.  Except I don’t expect we’ll ever get there.

Shortly we will communicate with our devices, I predict, through our thoughts.  By 2029 (and probably a lot sooner) we’ll think our input and see pictures in our heads.

In other words, we avoid the need for mechanical devices between our neural circuits and our smart devices.  Both ways communication will occur directly from your brain waves to the Internet via wireless transmissions.  Only twenty years to get there but perhaps that is a very feasible scenario.

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Are You Mobile Web Ready?

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In some parts of the world, more of your customers would be trying to find you on a mobile device than via a regular computer.  That mobile device might be an iPhone or a Blackberry or even a cell phone. 

If you rely on local customers visiting your establishment, then the odds go up dramatically that some customers will be trying to find you while they are on the go.  If you hope that your existing traditional website will be visible and give a pleasing introduction to your company then you may be in for a big disappointment. 

Some mobile device browsers such as the Opera Mini browser do a remarkable job in doing the best they can to make a traditional website mobile friendly.  However only a very small fraction of mobile users are using this browser.  Even if they do, a website that has been designed to give a good user experience at a typical screen width of 1064 pixels presents challenges at even 300 pixels.  It implies an unacceptable amount of downward scrolling.

Another factor that brings the mobile web closer is the increasing popularity of Twitter.  People are used to working with very small snippets of information.  One Web Is Here is how F J van Wingerde sees it.

This is not new.  Even back in 2007, Johann Burkard was encouraging all to Get your website ready for the Mobile Web in 10 steps.  His steps were:

  1. Keep page sizes down
  2. Add shortcuts
  3. Use few images
  4. Use less text
  5. Avoid horizontal scrolling
  6. Provide a handheld style sheet
  7. Be careful with JavaScript
  8. Get emulators
  9. Get mobile devices
  10. Keep mobile browser statistics

lbost (Local Business Online Smart Tips)

There some good suggestions there but this oversimplifies the problem.  What is required is a website designed specifically for mobile devices.  It must be very much simpler and ideally should require minimal scrolling.  SMM has such a mobile website at www.lbost.com.  It offers Local Business Online Smart Tips (LBOST). 

It uses a CSS stylesheet appropriate for mobile devices with one small addition that only operates on traditional computer screens.  In this case a maximum width of 300 pixels applies.  This means that even on a traditional screen, you see the website as you would on a mobile device.

This is achieved by the following lines in the CSS stylesheet together with putting the whole web page within a div with the id container: 

@media screen	{	#container	{
		width:320px;
		margin: 0 auto;
			}	}

It is useful to see the mobile content in a more limited width like this. It is a constant reminder of the challenges that are faced in trying to keep it simple for a mobile device.

Communicating well with that growing audience of local customers who are on the go is not just a question of having a good mobile device display. As in the traditional Web, a big determinant of the number of visitors is visibility in the search engines. Google et al. are having some difficulties in doing local search effectively. Important showcases here are the Google Local Business Center and Google Maps. 

LBOST provides a window on this rapidly evolving scene.  To be on the leading edge, subscribe to the RSS news feed and get the news as it happens. 

If you accept that keeping up with the competition requires that you have a mobile Web presence then why not contact us now.

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Android Netbooks Will Boost The Mobile Web

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As yet the mobile web has been growing strongly based on only a very limited use of the functionalities that will be available.  In addition the price gouging policies of the Canadian telecoms for broadband services has throttled the mobile Web growth in Canada, relative to the rest of the world.

Without too much fanfare, the increased functionality for mobile devices that will be possible is moving on to the radar screen of the movers and shakers.  The efforts of the Open Handset Alliance is particularly important here.  Rich Miner, Google’s Group Manager for Mobile Platforms, says no one party should control the future of the mobile platform.  All must work together in concert.

Now we have an example of what will be possible with Mobile devices with experts testing Android, the Google mobile operating system, on Netbooks.  (Tip of the hat to Lee Messenger, Cre8asite Tech News Reporter, who spotted an article suggesting Android Netbooks coming, but more likely in 2010.

The fact that various OHA partners have already developed Android enough to easily work on our netbook may be considered evidence enough that Google is getting increasing buy-in from industry players to realize this vision.

Android already has two product “policies” in its code. Product policies are operating system directions aimed at specific uses. The two policies are for 1) phones and 2) mobile internet devices, or MID for short. MID is Intel’s name for ‘mobile internet devices,’ which include devices like the Asus netbook we got Android running on.

Once the full functionality of the Mobile Web is available on mobile devices such as Netbooks, it may be expected that market growth will accelerate rapidly.

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Google Gphone. Which One?

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The Google Gphone is coming. The Gphone is coming. But what exactly will it look like. TechCrunch opined a month ago that Gphone may really happen, and the Ammunition Group may be designing it. That goes against the more prevalent view that Google will be backing an open source mobile operating system that could finally break the carriers stranglehold on the mobile market. That stems from their involvement in the Open Handset Alliance and Android.

Now the New York Times seems assured that T-mobile will offer the first mobile phone with Google software. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.

Apparently Google is eager to get the Android platform on phones quickly because it thinks that the mobile Web is vital to the long-term growth of its digital advertising business. We can make more money on mobile than we do on the desktop, eventually, Eric E. Schmidt, Googles chief executive, said in an interview on CNBC this week.

Daniel Langendorf feels that Google should have developed its own Gphone.

In his Gphone fantasy, Google forms its Mobile Dream Team and works closely with the worlds leading cell phone manufacturers. Maybe they come up with two form factors one with a BlackBerry-like keyboard, one all-touch like the iPhone. They establish a consistent Gphone design language that can be executed between manufacturers.

That does not seem to be happening.

Going out on a limb, I have often wondered whether the Google Gphone will be a very cheaply available mobile phone that can help to reduce the digital divide. That would certainly be dear to the heart of Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. You would have to read between the lines of his most recent pronouncement for confirmation of that.

We’re nearing the tipping point for mobile computing to deliver timely, geographically and socially relevant information.

Closer to home, we’re at the cusp of a truly global internet that will bring people closer together and democratise access to information. We are all free to innovate on the net every day and we should look forward to more people around the world enjoying that freedom.

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Screen Resolution and CSS Style Sheets

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Clearly the biggest problem in trying to get both Desktop PCs and Mobile Devices to display web pages in a satisfactory way is the vastly different size of screen. There’s an excellent AListApart article on that, which describes the problem as follows:

Because their screens are small and the device may not always have a horizontal scrolling mechanism, overflow in the horizontal direction is a major problem on handhelds. In addition to letting content wrap into a single column, you need to make sure wide elements fit the narrow screen.

The solution which the article describes well is to use different CSS style sheets. You include both a style sheet for ‘screen‘ that applies to Desktop PCs and a style sheet for ‘handheld‘ that applies to Mobile Devices. It sounds fine in theory. However look at that first Hot Mobile News Item. Microsoft Mobile is touting the Dell Axim X51v. It looks absolutely magnificent. It has a Display Resolution of 640 x 480. It would be a shame with all that resolution to put everything in one column.

So we have a Mobile Device that shouldn’t really behave like a ‘handheld’. Has anyone got a solution for that?

Related: The One Web Principle

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