Friday 15 February 2013

The challenges of supporting mobile devices today

Even though mobile browsers now almost universally support HTML, you will still face many challenges when aiming to create great mobile browsing experiences:

  • Screen size - Mobile devices vary dramatically in form, and their screens are often much smaller than desktop monitors. So, you may need to design completely different page layouts for them.
  • Input methods – Some devices have keypads, some have styluses, others use touch. You may need to consider multiple navigation mechanisms and data input methods.
  • Standards compliance – Many mobile browsers do not support the latest HTML, CSS, or JavaScript standards.
  • Bandwidth – Cellular data network performance varies wildly, and some end users are on tariffs that charge by the megabyte.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution; your application will have to look and behave differently according to the device accessing it. Depending on what level of mobile support you want, this can be a bigger challenge for web developers than the desktop “browser wars” ever was.

Developers approaching mobile browser support for the first time often initially think it’s only important to support the latest and most sophisticated smartphones (e.g., Windows Phone 7, iPhone, or Android), perhaps because developers often personally own such devices. However, cheaper phones are still extremely popular, and their owners do use them to browse the web – especially in countries where mobile phones are easier to get than a broadband connection. Your business will need to decide what range of devices to support by considering its likely customers. If you’re building an online brochure for a luxury health spa, you might make a business decision only to target advanced smartphones, whereas if you’re creating a ticket booking system for a cinema, you probably need to account for visitors with less powerful feature phones.

http://www.asp.net/whitepapers/add-mobile-pages-to-your-aspnet-web-forms-mvc-application