The mobile internet is taking over the world at a fast pace to keep up with this new medium there are a number of ways to design and develop for it and no one is quite sure what is the best way to create mobile applications. This is not stopping the user from accessing the internet using the phone. All the data is saying that this medium is the quickest growing and in parts of the world it has already over taken the desktop computer. In this article we will discuss the different ways of creating a website for the mobile device and the pros, cons and pitfalls.
The screen size in mobile website development
This new way of using the internet is challenging and exciting, the first glaring problem that needs to be worked through is the different screen sizes. On the desktop our boundaries for setting up a website are relativity the same. However mobile devices come in all shapes and sizes and a developer has to make some decisions about how they will tackle a new website one way is to design a fluid website. A fluid website can expand or shrink depending on the screen size although this takes a lot of extra thought and development.
Bandwidth affects mobile devices
The new age of mobile devices essentially are small hand held computers, with this power users tend to think they are the same as a desktop computer but they do have limitations . The mobile wireless network that connects the mobile devices to the internet has a limitation of only letting so much information across the waves at one time. Developers should consider this and find ways to make sure the information is not too large, one way is sending smaller images than you would send to a desktop computer. The user not only gets the same information that the website owner is giving the desktop computer they are also greatly reducing the amount of information that the mobile device has requested with the user not having any idea that this is happening.
Different ways of developing a mobile website
Right now there are many different theories on how to develop for mobile websites. There is the mobile app, using css, and the redirection to another website with a different interface but with the same content delivered to the user. All have benefits and the industry is not sure what standard they will adopt. Personally I like the idea of having the server do a redirect to another interface and call back to the content stored in the database. The reason for this is user-ability the screen size is completely different so setting up a second layout for mobile devices allows the user to get the greatest experience.