I do most of my casual web surfing on my phone. The PC is primarily for work; writing code and prose, editing images, etc. The phone is where I catch up with the news and skip from link to link exploring new topics, sites and authors. Usually my mobile surfing starts with a link in Twitter or Google reader. Most of the time it works. But about once a week I click on a link to a story and it … Continue reading
I’ve been using my N8 a lot lately and because the Symbian^3 browser is so bad (slow, too small default fonts and no text-reflow on zoom) I’ve been using Opera Mobile 10.1 quite a bit as well. It’s a much better browser overall; it’s noticeably at faster loading complex pages, has tabs, lets you copy page text, has some HTML5 support including geolocation and text is supposed to reflows to fit the screen width. But I keep running into pages … Continue reading
Mobile site builder XTGem has been growing by leaps and bounds. According to CEO Povilas Musteikis, the free service now has nearly a million users. Of course not all are active but about 100,000 of XTGem’s user sites generate page views every day. Total page views are running about 300 million per month and traffic is growing by 20% per month. XTGem is built around an easy to use template driven site generator/editor. It’s quite powerful with features like the … Continue reading
I consider WordPress Mobile Pack (WPMP) by James Pearce & friends to be the best plug-in for creating a mobile friendly version of your WordPress Blog. It detects mobile devices and serves them a compact, fast loading version of your blog. There’s a link to the full site on every page so mobile users aren’t locked into mobile formatted version. And unlike some other mobile plugins that only work with the iPhone and other high end devices, WPMP detects all … Continue reading
Bryan and Stephanie Rieger are designers who take an pragmatic, inclusive approach to delivering content across a wide range of devices. Earlier this year they released two seminal (and beautifully designed) presentations on mobile. “Sowing Seeds” is about mobile in the developing world and why targeting only the iPhone and Android misses huge populations of people who depend on basic devices to close the digital divide. “Rethinking the Mobile Web” is a guide to creating content that is accessible on … Continue reading
It’s been three months since the “OAuthcalypse” when Twitter started requiring that third party apps use OAuth to access the Twitter APIs. OAuth is generally a good thing, as it means you no longer have to share your Twitter credentials with every app that wants to access Twitter on your behalf, greatly reducing the risk that a rouge app might start spamming or posting malicious tweets in your name. Apps can still misuse your Twitter account but if one does … Continue reading
I try to build mobile sites that work on everything from an old wml-only browsers to iPhones and the latest Android “Superphone”. It’s more work but I believe it’s worthwhile. Supporting more devices brings in more traffic and hopefully makes users of old devices smile when they find a site that actually works on their phones. I use adaptation to vary page and image sizes and MIME types to suit the capabilities of various devices. BlackBerrys, iPhones and most modern … Continue reading
Paul Andrew’s Speckyboy Design Magazine is one of my favorite web and graphic design blogs. Content includes design showcases and loads of articles listing and reviewing Paul’s favorite free and high quality design resources. Paul recently created a mobile view for Speckyboy using Mobify.me‘s WYSIWYG online mobile design tool and hosting service. Yesterday he posted a Showcase of 20 Mobile-Friendly Popular Design Blogs which includes screenshots of each listed site, all of which were built using Mobify. Almost all the … Continue reading