Thinking from a mobile first perspective with phablets in play and Microsoft Surface, should I stick to the standard breakpoints or go with more of:
#media only screen
and(max-width: 414px)
and (max-width: 736px)
and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
}
This is what I am thinking. If I do it like that for hand held devices and just develop fluid, would it be better? Or should I use what was mentioned here:
stackoverflow iPhone media queriews
I think targeting specific devices has is its place, though I don't think it's a good starting point.
As a more general approach to mobile design, have you considered begining with a responsive design, there are a host of frameworks available to get you started quickly.
Then test your site at different viewports and add your own media queries that are specific to your design. For example maybe the layout of your header works best if it changes at 800px instead of your framework preset of say 768px.
As a final step, test your site on as many devices as you can and only then write device specific media queries, and only if they are really necessary.
Ideally you want your mobile site design to work well for current and future mobile devices, and so the more general your approach is at the start, the more you'll future-proof your design.
Good luck!
Related
Does anyone know of a way to target only iOS devices using media queries? I'm looking for a way to give an iPhone (1,3G,3GS,4,4S,5) user one experience, an iPad (1,2,3,mini) user another, and everybody else (desktop, android, windows phone, bb) the default experience.
I feel like my options are limited since many phones share similar widths and parameters. Does anyone know of anything to use in media queries that are specific to iPhones and specific to iPads?
I've so far locked down iPhone 5 with the following code:
#media screen and (device-aspect-ratio: 40/71){}
and iPhone 4 and 4S with:
#media
only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio : 2) and (orientation:portrait),
only screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio : 2) and (orientation:portrait){}
#media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio : 2) and (orientation:landscape), screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio : 2) and (orientation:landscape){}
I've seen similar questions to this on here, but haven't found one that has addressed this specific use case.
This is for use in an email so I'm unable to use javascript. Media Queries only...
Thanks
Media queries can only infer a few media features, and are designed to serve different content based on features, not brand or model.
Probably best you could do is to target the exact device-width for each device listed: someone here has already provided, as an indication, how to specifically match the iPad's dimensions.
The problem is that out of the huge range of devices out there, some feature the same dimensions (and the webkit browser — which can be inferred via hacks). All in all, CSS is even worse than JS at determining esoteric brand or OS features of the device in question.
We are going to redevelop one website we developed as an ASP.NET website to be a mobile one.
So, I'm wondering how does the development of a mobile website differ from a normal one?
Also, what is the best approach to do this taken in consideration that this mobile website will be browsed mainly from iPhone?
There are a number of differences between a mobile device and a standard computer.
The screens are much smaller (fewer pixels to display your page). You should put fewer elements on each page.
They are typically viewed in portrait mode (narrow display - narrow page). You should plan on using the full width of the screen instead of setting a fixed page width like most people do on standard web pages.
People use finger gestures to manipulate the page instead of a mouse (buttons/links should be larger)
They can include additional features such as geo-location, telephone, etc. that you can incorporate into your app to be easier to use. There are some libraries available to help you use these, such as jQuery Mobile.
Users are concerned about battery life plus the CPU tends to be slower. Make sure you keep animations and client side processing to a minimum.
Users are concerned about data usage. Keep ajax calls to a minimum (don't ask the server for data every few seconds!) and use graphics sparingly (it's better to use html/CSS to make the page attractive).
Flash isn't supported on iPhone and is not well supported on other devices. However, most mobile devices have decent support for HTML5, so you can typically use that instead.
Users on smartphones are used a different experience.
In addition to Brian's answer I'd add:
Screens are not resized but scrolled, however sides scrolling is not generally a good experience
Screens orientations can change, but the same scrolling rules apply
Consumers are used App like behaviour and as such less information with backwards and forwards between pages is common and between sites
Consumers generally have data concerns so data traffic needs to be minimised
Controls/buttons/selections/data entry need to optimised for hand gestures - for example think of what happens with the keyboard pops up to allow data entry, how much screen is available - can the see all their input easily if they need to?
I suggest that for developing a mobile website is to use the target smartphone for a few weeks to understand how the device is used in the real world.
I'm afraid you cannot use current asp-View to mobile especially for iPhone. There's special control set for iphone development - componentone.
If you web application is based on MVC or MVP patterns then moving will be not difficult.
Recently we have developed a site for iphone users, we are using asp.net/sql for normal site.
But when you look at mobile sites, mobile normally have small screens and some time optimization problem.
We use jqtouch for mobile development. A JQuery plugin for mobile web development on the iPhone,Android, iPod Touch, and other forward-thinking devices.
Learning Video
Getting started
Establish the context for the mobile site: is there subset of information that is more relevant to your mobile users? Maybe your regular site has apps that are irrelevant on mobile devices? Either way, you should create your mobile site separately in a mobile folder! You can then use a sub-domain to reach it: for example, http://m.mysite.com
You can use a combination of CSS Media Queries and 51degrees.Mobi to detect browser features and render the correct size layout depending on which type of device the user has.
http://html5boilerplate.com/
http://www.modernizr.com/ (this is included in HTM5 Boilerplate)
http://51degrees.codeplex.com/
Do not make the stupid mistake of following current fads like "Responsive Web Design" which attempts to squeeze a desktop version of a website into a mobile screen. Above links should get you started.
My web site has a different mobile version that's suited for iPhone/Android devices. The problem, however, seems to be in the site's performance. It's really slow and heavy, even though I'm not loading any images.
On the other hand, when I use Gmail's or YouTube's mobile version, they're so fast they almost perform like a native mobile application.
How do they do that?
Your help is much appreciated :)
See my comment. Also, if the slowness you perceive is when interacting with the site it could be that it lacks the ability to accept touch events. On mobile web, if you have not wired up the UI for js touch events the experience will seem slower because the device browser has to fall back to standard click and other mouseevents which are not optimal. Frameworks such as mootools and jquerymobile/jqtouch have these events baked in. Take a look at the mootools solution which has quite a good write up: http://davidwalsh.name/mootools-touch
They probably making use of local storage http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/
Are your pages too large? Try to use gzip and/or reduce output
Your server's connection speed may also be responsible of slowness
Well, You don't need to include any javascript framework to make it fast clickable.
By implementing some JavaScript you can achieve that. Google has released a solution for that
https://developers.google.com/mobile/articles/fast_buttons
This will allow visitor to interact with application native way. From Android 4 (as far as I remember) version by setting viewport meta tag the browser will automatically apply the fast click functionality.
For the animation issue always use Hardware accelerated animation with a fall back for older mobile browser. Using hardware accelerated animation it will make your application smooth as silk.
Follow this guideline and you can make your application as fast as gmail / youtube mobile version.
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/html5/
Best of luck.
Your webapp is consuming too much RAM. Don't use so many libraries and don't attach so many event handlers.
Following iPad's announcement and its SDK (iPhone SDK 3.2), porting apps to iPad becomes an important issue. What guidelines I should follow in my iPhone apps to ensure I can port it to iPad as seamlessly as possible?
The different resolution is particularly an important issue. While the iPad runs iPhone apps unmodified, it's not really the desirable behavior for a native app. How can we make our iPhone apps resolution-independent so that they can run gracefully on all resolutions like most desktop apps?
If you've been using IB and setting the resize behaviors of elements properly, and also coding frame coordinates all relative to each other you are half-way to having a UI that can potentially scale to a larger screen.
From the screen shots there are new kinds of action-sheets as well, potentially attached to UI elements instead of floating - if you use overlays today they will probably work about the same but you may want to consider changing placement from the center on larger display.
UPDATE:
Now the event is over, and registered developers can download the SDK - although we cannot talk about specific features here just yet, read through ALL of the documents related to the new OS version as there are a number of things aimed at helping you transition to supporting both platforms. Also before you start using custom libraries for things take a look through the API changes to see what new abilities might be supported that are not today.
Generally speaking, what I said above about IB holds true, and also you should start thinking about how your apps today could use more space to present more information at once instead of being split out over multiple screens. Also if you are doing any projects right now that use images, make sure to initially design the images large enough that you can also use them for higher resolution tablet applications.
It is far more reasonable to expect users to input text (and larger amounts of it) than with a non-iPad device.
Nothing, it appears. Although we don't have the SDK quite yet. It will all existing run iPhone app without an issue, albeit at reduced resolution.
It remains to be seen how much of the existing iPhone SDK is shared with the iPad SDK UI wise.
Judging by what has been said, absolutely nothing. You will have to adapt to the new screen size and better hardware all together, if you want to take advantage of the features that the improved device offers. The lack of a 3g module is also something to consider if your app(s) rely on that functionality.
I want to allow our main application to generate document files that can be easily read on the iphone, or other smart phones. The easiest way to do this, I think, is to create a simple HTML file and use javascript to show / hide different bits of it. For example, when the user clicks / touches "section 1", the section expands to show its full details; otherwise, it will remain collapsed to save space.
What guidelines should I follow when creating this file? I've done a little research and arrived at the following:
The iphone has a native resolution of 320x480, but only about 320x400 is visible for a web page.
Other smartphones have resolutions from 160x120 (probably not high enough to bother with) up to 320x240 and some even have 480x640.
These are useful for deciding how to style and arrange the HTML output, for example. Are there any other useful guidelines to work with? For example:
1) How big / small should I make things to let the user have a large enough 'target area'?
2) How can I get the file onto the iphone? Would the user have to drag and drop it via USB?
3) What size of fonts can I use before it gets too small to read?
etc etc. I don't actually have an iphone to test on, which makes this a little more problematic.
Thanks for your help!
I don't know about other smart phones, but the only way your file is going to get onto the iPhone is via the web browser, email, or a custom application that you write. There is no general mechanism for uploading files to the iPhone.
It's surprisingly easy to read even fairly small text on the iPhone, and the gesture-based zooming makes it very easy to zoom in and out.
If you're going to provide your documents through ASP.NET you might want to check this out:
http://mdbf.codeplex.com/.
It allows you to detect what kind of smartphone did the request, you can then check out the capabilities (screen-resolution, color-display, screen-pixels height... etc.)
Most mobile browsers render XHTML-MP (XHTML Mobile Profile). You can get away with rendering that.
iPhones (and other WebKit phones like Android) support the viewport meta tags which can make the experience more tailored to that phone screen size. You can learn about these in the iPhone web page creation docs from Apple.
If you are really interested in supporting a wide range of handsets, you should look at a "multi-serving" technology like WURFL, which will let you abstract a lot of the complexity away from supporting hundreds of handsets. It's sort of yesterday's technology though, since modern mobile browsers render most web pages just fine.
I'm not sure how current this is, but Yahoo says that one of the restrictions for an iPhone is that it won't cache files larger that 25k uncompressed. This doesn't affect your display necessarily, but it could affect your performance and so you may want to take it into consideration for your design.