dotMobi Mobile Web Developer's Guide
I am proud to announce we recently posted the dotMobi Mobile Web Developer's Guide on mobiForge. This is quite a comprehensive guide to mobile web development. It layers on the advice from the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 document, but takes it further. more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 3: More Views
In the previous article, you saw the various basic views such as the TextView, EditText, Button, and how you can use them in your Android applications. In this article, we shall continue our exploration of another three categories of views - Picker views, List views, and Display views. The views discussed include: TimePicker view DatePicker view ListView view Spinner view Gallery view ImageView ImageSwitcher view GridView view more...
Build Web Apps for iPhone using Dashcode
So far, much mobile developer attention has been fixated on the iPhone SDK released by Apple to build native iPhone applications. This is understandable, since with the SDK you can write native iPhone apps that take full advantage of the capabilities provided by the device, such as accessing the accelerometer, the camera, as well as obtain geographical locations using Core Location. more...
Are Widgets ready for me?
OK, so getting back to the widget reality here. I'd like to take a look at what the platforms are, what your options are and if it's really even worth it to go there. I know that last time I got a bit distracted with the whole 'sprite' thing, but I promise to stay on track here. more...
Widget Investigation leads to a 'Worst Practice' Discovery
Nokia just wrapped up their Developer Conference in Monaco last week. Sadly, I didn't have the budget to go. Maybe you were lucky and did (or maybe you live there, lucky you!). Anyhow, one of the technologies that they're pushing these days is their WRT (Web Run Time) or Widgets for the lay person out there. This whole mobile widget thing is nothing new, but what does appear to be new is that they're gathering a steam this time. more...
Mobile Web Benchmarks: What can you do?
Yesterday, Gomez and dotMobi published a second set of mobile Web benchmarks. The metrics are taken across three key industries: banking, airlines, and search, each of which represents an exciting and important slice of the mobile Web. I don't want to analyse the results here (the mobile Web is getting slower apparently!) - instead, I'll take a brief look at what these benchmarks might mean for you as a developer. more...
Accesskeys: Thinking about them in a QWERTY world
Interestingly enough, in this time of excitement and interest in building apps for mobile phones, Google did a refresh on their web apps for iPhone and Android. Go figure, seems like the mobile web isn't dead even on high end, high power devices. Even more, it would appear to make sense to build mobile specific web interfaces even for fully functional WebKit browser based devices. Imagine that! more...
Handset Market Share Data (why it matters)
With Mobile World Congress and CTIA now behind us, it's difficult to not get hot bothered and drooly about what new handsets are going to be on the market. Don't get me wrong, hot, new, fully functional and super sexy are all good things to have in a handset, especially in these otherwise gloomy times. However, as a developer it's important to remember to not get too carried away in the excitement, and here's why. The handset sales figures for November and December in the US were recently released, and a look at them reveals something telling for how one might (or might not) target content development. more...
Effective Design for Multiple Screen Sizes
So you're a designer and have been tasked with the design of a mobile web site. Chances are, unless you're designing for only one device you're quickly going to be faced with a common problem experienced by designers who work with mobile devices; figuring out what screen size to actually design for. For instance: more...
The Best and Worst of the Mobile Web
Our sister-site mobiThinking.com has just published an eBook on "The Best and Worst of the Mobile Web". In it there are examples of winners and sinners, those who do it right, and those not quite right, and why! So now might be a good time to fire up your mobile browser and let us know if you agree. more...
