Like I have said for the last 3+ years, mobile functionality’s future is in mobile web, not in native app installs.
HTML5 makes sense here of course. You still need to consider browser compatibility however, which too many people skip right over.
Give me a ring today and we can discuss how to make your next iPad/Iphone/Android project full interoperable over the widest array of devices and marketable to audiences both old and new.
Back in 2009, I wrote an article discussing the future of the mobile web which was simply one of many similar screeds that I had penned on the Fourth Speaker. Ok, enough with the self- congratulating on the subject. I know you will soon be asking us to optimize your site for mobile, or you will be irrelevant.
What I wanted to point out in this post is a recent TechCrunch article covering Facebook’s Mobile ambitions. The read is a good one indeed, as it simultaneiously uncovers the dog-eat-dog underbelly of the big tech players and the absolute importance of the mobile web.
Mobile will become the big survival test for the big names of today, as well as the marker for whether your business will thrive or suffer in obscurity. Take this seriously. You should not think todays battles between the big players as isolated from the battles you will face to make your business the best that it can be.
Here is the comment from a fellow developer on the story that triggered this post:
Kevin Cawley ยท Boulder, Colorado
dude, you have lost your mind creating drama where there is none. mobile web apps will be the future - it is inevitable; everyone knows this, facebook knows this, and that is why they are pushing this project to accelerate destiny.mobile web technology will catch up (just like it did on the desktop). as a developer I will massively benefit because I can build one app that runs anywhere. and my consumers will benefit because they can have a choice in mobile device and have a consistent and good experience. how can this not be clear to everyone?
the big losers will be the app stores (mainly apple) - google I suspect doesn’t care as they will make buckets of $ on mobile search.
New update here is that we just recently redid the CGIPro site to optimize it for a very wide range of browsers based on the viewport width.
Take a look at the rest of the site (the blog still has a few tweaks outstanding) in a pinched width and you will see the style automatically adjust to fit.
As a quick side project, I also just launched my wife’s female voice over talent website from the CGIPro template using the same tools. I even changed out the audio player based on the screen width so iPhone and Android users will just have a link to the MP3 files, which enjoy native support.
This really matters most for mobile. As an android phone user, I can tell you that most websites I see (which of course applies to the growing iPhone community as well) have a terrible formatting problem when viewing them on the phone. I can take your site as is and transform it to be optimal on all types of today’s continually diverging media.