Techmeme, the popular tech news aggregator, launched a new mobile site yesterday.  The official announcement is here.

I like what Techmeme has done,  The site, while targeted specifically at the iPhone, Android and Palm WebOS phones, isn't turning anyone away.  You can visit techmeme.com/m with any browser you want.  I tried it using the Android browser,  a Nokia N95-3's Webkit based browser, Opera Mini 4.2 and the old Openwave 6.2 emulator. I found that the new design worked just as well in Opera Mini (image, top) and Nokia Webkit as it did on Android. I believe that the site will work well on any mobile browser with reasonably good CSS and JavaScript support.  A screen at least 320px wide or Opera Mini's fit-to-width "Mobile View" is also desirable to avoid horizontal scrolling.

Not surprisingly the site was unusable in the Openwave emulator, which I'm using as a stand in for a feature phone (aka dumphone browser) as I no longer have a working one. The site loaded but was unusable. The text was scrunched into a single column five characters wide and the tabs and links to  "Discussions" of each news item were not clickable. That's not really a problem as Mini-Techmeme, the three year old version of Techmeme for old school mobile browsers  has not been discontinued and is still available at techmeme.com/mini.

The new iPhone/Android/Web OS/Opera Mini/Symbian Webkit version of Techmeme has virtually everything that's on Techmeme's  desktop site including the "Discussion" feature which pulls in other stories that link to each item. The discussions are excluded from Mini-Techmeme.

It's not just Techmeme that got the new design either.  Sister sites Memeorandum on politics, WeSmirch for entertainment gossip and Ballbug for baseball also have new smartphone optimized versions at memeorandum.com/m, wesmirch.com/m and ballbug.com/m respectively.

I do have one minor beef with the new design though.  Why did Techmeme feel the need to  disable the browser "Back" button and replace it with an in-page "Back" link? That's non-standard, non-intuitive and just plain confusing for users.

Coincidentally, Google also launched a new version of Google News yesterday and it's also targeted at the iPhone, Android and Palm OS.  They basically did the same thing as Techmeme, redirecting the chosen browsers from news.google.com to the new site.  They also left a backdoor open at news.google.com/news/i which can be accessed from any browser.  Like  the new Techmeme, this richer mobile version also works in Opera Mini and Symbian Webkit but not OpenWave (it renders OK but some of the links depend on Javascript which the browser doesn't support).  The enhanced mobile version of Google news uses a fluid layout and renders well in Opera Mini even on screens as narrow as 128px wide, and the browser's back button works.  Compared with the legacy mobile News version at http://news.google.com/m/, the new one has more images, links to mobile formatted YouTube videos and it picks up the user's custom local news and keyword based sections from the desktop version of Google News.

I'm sure we will be seeing more and more of these "iPhone/Android/Web OS" optimized sites.  That's a good thing for users of more capable browsers but poses a problem for mobile bloggers and analysts.  What to call this gendre of  mid-sized (between desktop and traditional mobile web) sites?  I've heard them called "iPhone", "Smartphone" and "Touch" sites but none of those really fits as they work on more than the iPhone, including with some non-smartphone browsers like Opera Mini and they don't depend on a touchscreen either. The best term I've heard seems to be "Middle Web" which was coined by Kelly Goto back in 2007.  That's what I'll be using to describe this class of rich mobile sites, at least until something better comes along.  Suggestions anyone?

PPK talks up the excitement of mobile web development, then brings the mood down a notch by listing the overwhelming array of browsers to be targeted! Quirksmode says it all. This talk is about quirks in mobile development, and some of the solutions out there.

Mobile CSS Quirks

So many platforms. Take just WebKit. You can't just say "WebKit" for example, because there's no webkit on mobile. There's iPhone Safari, Android WebKit, Bolt, Iris, different versions, etc. "If someone says my 'app should work in WebKit', laugh in his face. There are just too many versions of WebKit, so as PPK says it, there really is no "WebKit for mobile".

That said, it's good that things are starting to converge towards WebKit. As for the others: Blackberry browser "is dead" as they'll be switching to WebKit; Mozilla is very late to the game; NetFront "is not very good". Windows Mobile 6.5 is a big improvement on 6.1, and with an improved browser, but it's still IE6 based. ('Nuff said.)

There's also a large legacy share, and if users are used to it already, that may be what they want to keep using.

Landscape versus profile mode is an interesting one for those of us desktop developers whose users don't flip their heads around on a regular basis. NetFront has some very surprising and idiosyncratic ways of dealing with it.

The modes don't stop there. There is also mobile versus desktop mode in some browsers; sometimes users can switch these in some obscure corner of their mobile browser preferences. Again, some surprising things happen in Opera and Android. Perhaps of more concern is the difficulty he had diagnosing the situation at first, when Android was showing three divs of the same width in one mode, and not in the other.

@media to the Rescue

Okay, what can we do about all this? Media queries are extremely useful and fairly well supported in modern mobile browsers.

max-width and min-width have subtle issues which PPK is currently researching, but max-device-width and min-device-width give more reliable results. orientation, aspect-ratio, and dpi (also needs research).

Mobile Javascript

Performance-wise, IE Mobile and Blackberry extremely slow. iPhone is middle ground. The really fast browsers are Opera on Samsung and N97, and S60 on Nokia E71 and N97. The bottom line is take your time with mobile Javascript development; you generally can't expect it to "just work"; you'll have to optimise. Also, don't use iframes - they're major performance hogs.

Mobile Connections

Tempting fate, PPK informs us that if someone in the room starts downloading movies, the netwrok gets slower for the rest of us.

Fortunately, browsers give us events to determine when user is going online and offline. Unfortunately, they're doing it wrong. Only Firefox automatically detects offline; all the others require the user to explicitly say "I'm offline now"!

W3C Widgets

In general mobile development, best practice is to put all the core files on the moble phone, and only download the data. But how can we do that with web apps, where the code comes down with the data? W3C widgets offer a solution. You just create a single HTML page with the CSS, Javascript, and images you need; add an icon and config; zip it up; and deploy. PPK reports it works in practice, and works in a "write once, run many" fashion. There are still problems to be sure, but he says it's the best interoperable solution we have today. But still many outstanding platforms: Blackberry (already talking about it), Nokia Maemo, Palm Pre, Android, and of course, iPhone.

Device APIs

Security risks mean critical device APIs will generally remain off limits to general websites for a while. Widgets have a better model, because they're more self-contained and can be verified, although not perfect either.

• 300 Case Studies of Social Media Marketing

There is a new blog aimed specifically at mobile web developers. It's Coders.mobi and offers tutorials, tips and tricks, code snippets and mobile site and toolkit reviews.

I think that there is a real need for a site like this. Mobile web development is a subset of web development in general but it isn't currently given much coverage by the big web development sites like Webdesigner's Depot and SitePoint.

Coders is new and doesn't have a huge amount of content yet but there's some good stuff like a recent post on using the Google Maps API to display maps on a mobile site. I'd classify the articles on Coders.mobi as beginner to intermediate level but definitely worth a look for anyone building mobile sites. I hope David Wiles, the developer behind Coders, continues to add useful mobile development content and features to the site.

The mobile version of Coders.mobi was created with WordPress Mobile Pack Source Mobility.mobi

Filed in: Wap Review Directory - Technology/Mobile/MobileTech

Ratings: Content Usability

Ready.mobi Score: 5 "Good"

Mobile Link: coders.mobi

Mobilestance.com has the honor of hosting a truly milestone Carnival of the Mobilists (COM) this week. The roundup of the very best in mobile blogging counts 200 (!) posts since it was founded in 2005 by expert mobile-watchers including Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino over at MobHappy (This is long before Russell took the helm at VP Global Alliances at AdMob and Carlo launched his career as an independent consultant/analyst and regular contributor to MobHappy.) This week features a trio of posts looking at the impact of the Google acquisition and a few surprises. So, check it out and join the conversation!

For a while there, designers and developers could ignore screen and pixel size, at least for "high end" devices. Let's be honest here, "high end" meant iPhone-like: touch or multi-touch screens, high end Webkit browsers, and 320 x 480 pixels.

That time is now over. To our mind, it really wasn't here in the first place.

Why is the time now over?

1. Android has matured a bit, and manufacturers are putting it on everything. Consider this ARCHOS Internet Tablet (800 x 480 pixels, 4.8 inches), this Vega Picture Frame (1366 x 768 pixels, 15.6 inches), this 7 inch tablet, or the nook's 3.5 inch screen with what looks like a 5:2 aspect ratio
2. Even Palm's WebOS devices will not be consistent, with Pre's pixel dimensions matching the iPhone's, but Pixi's are at 320 x 400 pixels (80 pixels shorter).
3. Normal Android phones, such as the Motorola Droid at 480 x 854 pixels, no longer have a predictable size. Who knows what the next devices screens will be like?
4. The Motorola Droid's pixels, like the ARCHOS pixels, are much smaller than the iPhone's; bitmaps that work well on one may not on the other.

We wrote Photoshop layout is not your friend in March; this new array of high-end devices forces a choice: design for iPhone only, or start designing for multiple screen sizes.

If you're designing Android applications, you have some tools available to you. The Android Developers' Supporting Multiple Screens gives designers and developers a way to deliver the correct layouts and graphics to the correct devices.

For now, however, Android doesn't really support the full array of screens upon which Android is found. Here is what the document's Range of Screens Supported section says about device support:

The Droid is there, as a high-density, normal screen. The iPhone (were it an Android) and early Android phones are medium-density normal screens. The ARCHOS is a medium-density large screen. The nook and the Vega are ... not in the table at all.

Android's support of screen issues is incomplete, but many steps better than previous cross-device platforms like browsers and Java ME. Despite this, many developers have simply ignored the possibility of different screen types. My favorite example is the Fuzzy Clock widget, which is supposed to take up 25% of the screen with a single line of text. Apparently they used a single-sized bitmap font because on the Droid, the "glanceable" clock has the equivalent of about 8 point font. Not at all readable.

And frankly, I don't expect Apple to keep to the current screen dimensions. I don't have any inside information, but they will make a smaller screen or a bigger screen, or a higher-density screen, or probably all three. So even those of you focusing just on the iPhone may want to look at your process in the next few months.

The hardest type of applications to design for multiple screen types are games, as many create mazes, game boards, and levels for a specific aspect ratio. If your application uses scrolling or other pagination techniques, however, you can probably design it to comfortably manage a wide variety of screen sizes. (But all bets are off for supporting the Nook's screen, which will really want to scroll laterally, not vertically). How? Go read the resources linked above in this article. Or hire us.

Little Springs Design is a user experience design consultancy focused exclusively on mobile. For information on contracting our design, strategy, training, and testing services, please contact us today.
See our scheduled training on mobile design, including convenient webinars

Copyright ©2009 Little Springs Design, Inc.

by Barbara at November 18, 2009 07:55 PM

<widget xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets" id="http://bondisdk.limofoundation.org/widget/webcmd" version="0.4.2" viewmodes="fullscreen">

widget.id = "http://bondisdk.limofoundation.org/widget/webcmd";
widget.version = "0.4.2";

<name short="WebC">Web Commander</name>

widget.name = "Web Commander";
widget.shortName = "WebC";

<author href="http://bondi.limofoundation.org/" email="sdk@bondisdk.org">LiMo Foundation</author>

widget.author = "LiMo Foundation";
widget.authorEmail = "sdk@bondisdk.org";
widget.authorHref = "http://bondi.limofoundation.org/";

  <feature name="http://bondi.omtp.org/api/ui" required="true"/>
  <license href="http://bondi.omtp.org/BONDI-LICENSE-2.0/"/>
  <content src="index.html"/>
  <feature name="http://bondi.omtp.org/api/appconfig" required="true"/>
  <feature name="http://bondi.omtp.org/api/filesystem" required="true"/>

<access network="false" localfs="false" remote_scripts="false"/>
<billing required="true"/>

widget.getItem("name")
widget.getItem("nameShort")
widget.getItem("authorEmail")
widget.getItem("licencseHref")

interface Widget {
    readonly attribute DOMString     config; // innerXML or rather JSON representation of configuration document
    readonly attribute Storage       preferences; // key value
    void openURL(in DOMString iri);
};

November 17, 2009

Martin's Mobile Technology Page

The 3G Stick on the Way Into the Notebook

When you walk through any town in Germany and many other countries these days and have a look at what's advertised in mobile phone stores, it's usually phones (naturally) and notebooks or netbooks with a 3G USB dongle for a reduced price. Some stores have now started to differentiate a bit and now advertise net-/notebooks with built in 3G connectivity. For most people it makes much more sense to have the 3G card inside, it just takes less space and you can't forget to take the dongle with you. But there are also some major disadvantages.

• A 3G USB dongle can be used with several computers and at least for me that counts for something.

• Also, it's easy to exchange the SIM card, which I do a lot when traveling. I expect, though, that most people won't care about this one.

• And then there's reception. In most parts of Europe, UMTS is still only on 2.1 GHz except for a few places with 900 MHz coverage. In other words, in-house is far from optimal in many places. So every now and then I am very happy about a USB stick solution that I can extend with a 2-3m USB extension cable and hang over a lamp or to place the 3G stick close to a window for better coverage and faster speeds.

• And then the stick can be used as the receiver for a 3G/Wifi bridge such as this one. Again, most people don't care but I like it a lot. When I travel alone, the stick is in the PC but then it's great to be able to share the connectivity when the need arises.

So do you think 3G USB sticks will mostly be integrated into netbooks and notebooks over the next couple of years or will the majority of network operators and users prefer an external solution?

by mobilesociety at November 17, 2009 07:16 PM

Wap Review

nokiaAAddict: Great Reviews, Rants and Apps

Gerry Moth's nokiAAddict.com is an indispensable site for Nokia and Symbian users whether they are actual addicts or just trying to get their phones to do what they want them to.

Gerry reviews the latest hardware and software but the best part of the site for me is its directory of S60 3rd and 5th apps. When you need an an app, avoid the frustrations of the Ovi Store and doggy download sites and head directly to nokiAAddict's Downloads page where you will find direct links to all the essential apps and utilities that you need to make the most of your phone. It's all there, the Opera Mini, Skyfire and Bolt browsers, Screenshot, Gravity, Y-Files and hard to find apps like Nokia's Sports Tracker and Internet Radio and the 3 Skype client.

Don't miss the blog either especially Gerry's classic rants on operator dirty tricks "The Unlimited Con" and incompetent phone repair centers, "Never Take Your Phone To Carphone Warehouse For Repair".

nokiAAddict is a WordPress.com hosted blog and benefits from WordPress.com's  default mobile plugin support.

Filed in: Wap Review Directory - Technology/Mobile/Smartphones/Symbian

Ratings: Content Usability

Ready.mobi Score: 4 "Good"

Mobile Link: nokiaaddict.com

by Dennis Bournique at November 17, 2009 06:46 PM

W3C Mobile Web Initiative

First Draft of Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap Published

The Mobile Web For Social Development (MW4D) Interest Group, part of the Mobile Web Initiative, has published a Group Note of Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap. This document describes some of the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones. It suggests the most promising directions for lowering barriers to developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear.

by Dominique Hazael-Massieux at November 17, 2009 05:08 PM

Volker on Mobile

An Example Why Nokia Struggles

Yesterday, Nokia announced the “Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition”, “an entertainment hub that combines mobile broadcast TV (DVB-H), social networking, music and gaming in one compact 3G...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

by Volker at November 17, 2009 10:45 AM

Tom Hume's blog

Heroes of the Mobile Screen

If I was going to build a dream team to run a mobile event here in the UK, it'd have to include the folks behind Swedish Beers, Over the Air, Mobile Monday, Mobile 2.0 and the Future of Mobile - all favourite events that I've ranted on about before now, and had the pleasure of participating in.

Luckily I don't have to bother building this team, because they've gone and gotten together anyway... and it looks like they're doing something a little bit different. Heroes of the Mobile Screen is running in London this December, and they've picked four very sensible topics for it: where's the money? What does all this social and location stuff mean? What do the kids make of this? And what to customers, and particularly women, want?

All really great stuff, and even better for having brought together a crowd of speakers that isn't just the usual faces...

by Tom Hume at November 17, 2009 06:16 AM

Lunkz

• Nokia exec talks Ovi platform, really nice discussion of where Ovi is and how Nokia see the world;
• Android Market games revenues rose in October, but only 53% which isn't the kind of massive growth you might expect to see this early in Androids life...
• Android compatibility library: "During the cross-compilation process, both the application and the Android compatibility library are cross-compiled from Java to Objective-C and linked with the Cocoa Touch compatibility library to yield a native iPhone application. "
• A new theory of awesomeness and miracles, including the putative construction of a go-playing machine larger than the universe;
• Fake Steve Jobs exposes a wonderful example of doublespeak: "I sent a copy of this to Katie with a note asking how we missed out on this guy, because he’s exactly the kind of coin-operated true believer we need around here."
• 5 things I wish someone had told me: "If your significant other absentmindedly mentions that he/she never sees you for dinner anymore, you had better resolve the situation quickly"
• Who can save Palm?: "Palm can only hope for a niche role in the smartphone market. Palm’s technology can only escape this role if WebOS software will become part of a strong, larger service ecosystem. One possibility is acquisition by RIM. Consumer potential of WebOS can take Blackberry user experience to a new level..."
• It's Googles world and handset makers just live in it: "by creating flagship devices featuring their latest and greatest they ensure forward momentum for the platform"
• Russell Davies at Playful (which I'm increasingly gutted to have missed): "These aren't games, like the industry thinks of games, these are something a little less, these are Barely Games. And these, are what I wanted to talk about."

by Tom Hume at November 17, 2009 05:58 AM