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Posted by Andy Dingley on 10/16/06 11:08
nagasaki mike wrote:
> could someone point me towards any respected sites out there that will
> explain (simply) the best ways to make websites mobile friendly?
Good, fluid, CSS-based design
Reading Joe Clark on accessibility (much of this is good sense for
mobiles too).
Good linearisation and good prioritisation, particularly for
navigation.
Mobiles don't usefully support 2-d navigation, so the user is forced
into 1-d scrolling through lists. Make sure that the nav you use is
workable as 1-d, and that it's accessible (i.e near the top). On the
"desktop web" consistency is important. On the "mobile web",
context-sensitivity becomes more useful. Re-arranging the nav in the
first couple of screenfuls of scrolled content so that it's
task-dependent can be a very powerful technique. Can you identify why a
customer is on your site? Can you offer them useful links that you can
predict they'll find useful? Are they browsing or buying? Is the
search function more useful to them today than the checkout function?
Understand your network. They're not all the same, particularly if
you're writing content for a "walled garden" that isn't the general
web. All the networks have some level of input transcoding (mainly
fixing up broken HTML and resizing images) but some of these have very
strange expectations about what they want to receive (e.g. ideas like
Vodafone's PartnerML).
Test on mobiles or emulators! With a range of desktop emulators you
can do a whole load of usability testing that's quicker and cheaper
than with live devices. With live devices you can test the accuracy of
emulation, and the real effects of speed restrictions. You need to test
with both.
Measure download size / speed after the networks' transcoders. Big
images might not be a problem (the transcoder squashes them anyway),
bloated HTML certainly can be.
Don't assume device charcteristics. Mobile devices are getting bigger
and more powerful all the time. Don't lock next years HoLeeFuk 9000
superphone into a 100x100 window you designed for last year's model.
If you find any other sites with good advice, please post links here.
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