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By Posted on Posted in Mobile Web 3 Comments Tagged with , , , , ,

[ad] James Pearce (CTO of dotMobi) wrote a great article yesterday about the impact of the iPhone on the industry and what it means for them. Of course, he’s right. What the iPhone is doing is helping the Web along to become a mobile medium. Does this make dotMobi or efforts like the W3C Mobile Web Initiative obsolete? Let me pose the question another way. In 5 years’ time, when the majority of Web usage is from mobile devices, will we all be using the browsers on these devices to pan, scan and zoom around pages that were designed for large screen desktop PCs? I think we can agree that this would be a kind of dystopian vision of the future of the Web. Apple certainly agrees. That’s why they released a set of guidelines on ptimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone. These guidelines, while developed by Apple in house specifically to match the capabilities of the iPhone browser, bear a striking resemblance to the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices and the dotMobi Developer Guide in their approach, language and purpose. All these documents are trying to change the mind-set of developers to get them to think about both the technical differences between mobile devices and PCs (for example, Apple saying “a touch-screen is not a mouse”) and also the differences in usage and behavior that need to be taken into account in designing for mobile use. The main difference between the Apple guidelines and the dotMobi and W3C documents are the level of browser …

The iPhone, dotMobi and the Future of the Mobile Web Read more »

By Posted on Posted in mobile 2.0, Mobile Web, Travel 1 Comment Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

So here I am, sitting in a panel at South by Southwest on “designing for convergent devices.” As I walked in, I caught the tail end of something that seemed really cool – a service called Zannel that does user gen video content with a mobile and Web UI. Forget Youtube for mobile – these guys have already done it. They’ve designed for simplicity, and it’s great that the designers and app developers here at SXSW are getting that message. Also interesting to see that the SXSW.mobi site is getting a lot of discussion here – and people aren’t asking “what is dotMobi?” – there really seems to be a lot of recognition here of what dotMobi is and more generally what a mobile friendly Web site is (works on your phone). That’s pretty cool. Just now listening to Denise Burton from Frog Design talking about the challenges of 4-way navigation based design (especially with regard to focus state). She stressed the importance of animations and transitions. YES. This is exactly the challenge that the WICD mobile profile seeks to address – being able to design consistent user experience that responds in a coherent way to user input, and be able to use SVG-based animations and transitions to respond to user feedback. Other notes: I had joked that they would probably put all the Interactive content off in a back room somewhere to keep the nerds away from the film and music people. Well, it’s no joke. These SXSW Interactive panels are off in what seems …

South by Southwest Live Notes Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Mobile Web No Comments Tagged with , , , ,

Thanks to the alert reader who sent in the following tidbit: a job posting in Seattle that asks for knowledge of the “W3C Best Practices” (as well as refencing both dotMobi and Mobile 2.0). This is the first time I’ve seen a job posting that specifically asks for knowledge of the work we’ve done in the Mobile Web Best Practices working group. The word is definitely getting around.