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SitePoint Design View |
Issue 53: December 2nd, 2008 The Useful and the Usable in Web Design |
Introduction
It's funny how it always seems to be the limitations of a medium that give it its signature flavor. Take the hiss of AM radio, the staticky snow of TV, or the scratches on vinyl records.
We use and love Twitter at SitePoint and, in case you missed it, we're showing our love with a free book. Here's the deal:
Now this is a cracker of a book -- less than 18 months old and written by a dream team of CSS gurus. If Twitter doesn't appeal, remember that creating an account is free, and what you do after you receive your book is up to you. The offer expires on December 9th, so shake a leg! In this issue, we'll talk about some of the ideas on mobile development I took away from the Web Directions South conference. Enjoy,
Alex Walker
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When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be ... a Mobile App Designer
"Aww ... do we have to?" To me, developing for mobile always felt like this:
It was like the Web, but only remotely as good. Then the Web Directions South conference, back in September, forced me to reconsider that idea. You see, until recently the iPhone stood alone. You could build a cool app for it, but porting your work to a Motorola or Nokia was a waste of time.
Tim Lucas referred to this new class of devices by the rather coarse-sounding title of SHITDANG phones, or Super Hot Internet Touchscreen Devices And Next Generation phones. In the interests of simplicity and arguably good taste, we might just refer to them in this article as Mobile 2.0 phones. So, what do you mean by a Mobile 2.0 phone?At this moment in time, I'm specifically talking about the iPhone, the G1, and any upcoming Android-powered device. Some have included the BlackBerry models Bold and Storm in the category but personally, I remain unconvinced.
No doubt there'll be some saying "Oh, but what about my Win
Mobile/Nokia E95/other smart phone? That's a Mobile 2.0 phone,
right?" Look on iTunes App Store and the Android Market and you'll see most of the development energy is going into apps like games, location-based services, and social networking -- almost anything apart from traditional phone services. So, why should I become excited about Mobile 2.0 development?Mobile 2.0 phones are changing the idea of what an application is -- both for us developer/designer types and for users. In part, this is because of the improvement of mobile screens and browsers, which are enabling sites to look and work more like standard desktop web sites. But mainly this is because the mobile environment itself is arguably a much more dynamic and interesting arena to build for. With a desktop/web app, we typically build an application that sits patiently and waits for the user to engage with the program. A service like eBay or Facebook is relatively comatose until our valiant user starts consciously interacting with it via mouse clicks and keyboard taps. Mobile 2.0 phones offer us a bunch of cool, new input types to work with, relying on the user to simply just be. These new input types include:
This opens up a bunch of new and really cool possibilities. Gabriel White gave some nice examples of how this might change the way you build your applications in his Sensing Context in Mobile Design presentation. For instance:
All of a sudden you're making apps that adapt to where they are and what's happening around them. To me, that idea makes developing for Mobile 2.0 the most interesting and exciting place to work right now. This is a new and developing landscape -- in many ways you could compare it to the Web in 1996. There's every chance that many of the applications that will be the behemoths of the Mobile Web in 2012 -- the Googles, Flickrs and eBays of mobile -- have yet to be thought of. Perhaps one of them is currently just a half-baked idea in the back of your mind. Okay, so now you're all inspired to write the next killer iPhone/Android app. What's next? Getting StartedTill now, the hardest thing about building native iPhone apps was the technical demands of writing Cocoa or Objective C -- typically outside the skill set of the average web developer/designer. Happily, there are some handy alternatives emerging that tap into some of the skills more common to us. A couple of weeks ago, Josh wrote about two of those solutions on the SitePoint News Blog, Big Five and PhoneGap.
I chose to spend time playing with PhoneGap for a few reasons:
In fact, creating a new app is with Phonegap is simple. After opening Phonegap in xCode you give your app:
After hitting Build, you're free to preview it in your iPhone emulator, where you'll see a new glassy iPhonized icon of your app waiting on the home screen. Okay, now a quick reality check. Although the PhoneGap codebase is developing rapidly, it's still very raw; currently it only supports a subset of iPhone/G1's functions (GPS, vibration, accelerometer, and camera). 'Promise' is the word, rather than 'deliver'. The other unfortunate reality is you're probably going to need a Mac to run the iPhone emulators and other SDK tools. Android's SDK is cross-platform, so it will be interesting to see how Apple respond as the Android market begins to grow. But make no mistake: there's going to be huge growth in this area over the next three years, and plenty of demand for developers. With many of us planning to take breaks in the coming weeks, what better opportunity to get a box seat on a fun and potentially lucrative ride!
That's all for this issue -- thanks for reading! I'll see you in a few weeks.
Alex Walker
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Welcome to Design View #53.
With
Twitter it seems to be an artificially imposed restriction -- its strict
140-character limit -- that has given it its original but very successful
edge.
With the October release of the Google phone, G1, we now have the
foundations of a brand new product category to
build for.
If
you've ever worked on a US federal government web site, you've probably
encountered Section 508 law for web accessibility. In this article, Rob
wades through the jargon to deliver the tips you need to ensure the sites
you build are compliant.
In Part
1 of this series, Myles gave us a taste for how to manipulate sprites on
the screen. In this fascinating follow-up, he reveals the end product of
some extreme JavaScript hacking—recreating the classic Mario
Brothers platform game!
HTML
tables have gained a new lease of life in the CSS era, now that they have
been freed from misuse as a layout element. In this article, Jonathan
demonstrates how you can use CSS to create exciting, colorful tables,
which will work successfully across browsers, as well as taking a peek at
what the future holds.