I normally only post tips related to ColdFusion and JavaScript. But I’ve be thinking about where the web is headed in terms of devices.
When I was first introduced to the online experience, I was in grade school and dialed up to BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). I’m not sure I really had any reason to access these systems, but they did intrigue me as I could literally watch each character populate the screen as the phone lines screamed high pitch tones. Phone numbers where the equivalent to today’s IP address. Dial a different phone number and you get a different BBS, the equivalent to today’s website, but without all the (real) graphics.
My computer was either an Apple IIe or an IBM Clone (heard of Packard Bell?) and probably had a 640×480 resolution with between 16 to 256 color depth. I remember downloading Super Mario Brothers type games and FPS games like Duke Nukem 3D that would take literally days to download but would play for months. All this would keep me out of my parent’s hair.
Then came high-school days, and I was introduced to the beta of Netscape on the MAC. I became intrigued once again and figured out how to create simple websites primarily by looking at source code and experimenting with what each code element did. At school the Internet was available on the network probably somewhere around 256KBs and at home the Internet was available via dial-up between 14.4KB/s to 56KB/s. My screen resolution was somewhere between 640×480 and 800×600 with between 256 colors to 32,000 colors or so.
At this point in time I started publishing actually useful information on the Internet. I remember developing a webpage for my counseling department and Science Club. I also developed an information site for the Mormon’s and created my first commercial site for a tool and die company along with a site for the Boys Town Dive Rescue Team. The tool and die site (unfortunately) maintained the same design up until this year.
Toward the end of my high-school career I was hired on into a small company but a fantastic opportunity. I took a BBS system that helped identify insurance fraud and literally converted it into a ColdFusion application w/ a Microsoft SQL 97 database, loading data from mainframe tapes that where mailed to us. My boss was pretty visionary, and with the sales initiative of my now best friend, I, along with the help of a couple of other programmers, created the first professional social network. Long before My Space, Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter the fraud detection application evolved into a community of private investigators, government agencies and insurance fraud investigators. Unfortunately the company was bought out under false tense and was pretty much destroyed.
At this point in time the norm was pretty much 800×600 to 1024×768 resolution with between thousands to millions of colors. At this point in time the portable computer evolved from a 50lb box w/ a 4″ green screen to laptops w/ 16MB of RAM and trackballs. There was even, yes, a tablet w/ a stylus that ran Windows 3.1! But WiFi didn’t exist yet and they weren’t very useful for Internet purposes.
Roll forward and laptops became pretty popular and useful, WiFi, Mobile Hotspots and Smart Phones also became popular. But in all reality the Internet was still presented the same except now also really small on a small screen for those who can actually still read that small. We also added the equivalent of Windows 3.1 programs to these little, yet powerful devices. These smart phones are great for looking up today’s weather or navigating to someone’s party (oh, and phone calls). But they’re not very good at letting you read this blog or making a Blue-Ray Player purchase from Amazon.com.
Introducing the iPad. Upfront I’m not an Apple fan due to their proprietariness, but no one can deny Apple started the Tablet revolution, and no one has quite caught up with them yet. According to PC Magazine, tablets are set to outpace laptop sales by 2016. With tablet sales currently around 100,000,000 per year and growing, that’s a lot of devices, which I can almost guarantee 99% of them are connected to the Internet. A good example is how my dad has given up the laptop for Internet browsing and primarily uses his iPad to access items such as Facebook and Skype.
With the fourth generation of the iPad due out in October, the second generation of the Kindle Fire due out soon and the Nexus 7 Tablet now shipping – this has become the year of the tablet.
Companies have not yet really caught on to needing to redefine their sites to become more mobile device friendly, but they’re starting to get the hint. The big question going mobile right now is app or mobile site?
Right now the Internet provides us with a relatively infantile access to information, applications, music, videos and basic games.
Mobile apps on the other hand limits the user to a fraction of a percent of what’s available on the Internet. They defiantly do have their place. Navigation, mail, grocery lists, camera and Social Networking are all a great fit. But for the most part most current Internet sites will never see the light of day on your mobile device as an App. The app markets have already become over-crowded and with Apple’s app market very limited. But in all reality, Apple probably has the best plan. Keep the app store limited to quality and useful apps and let the rest exist in the browser.
However, what we do need is a middle man that allows us to more efficiently use websites on mobile devices. Tapping out searches or URL’s on these devices are cumbersome and thus changes the game. This middle man will appear one day, my guess is in the Google Chrome browser first. But in the mean time we need to stop taking the legacy Internet website and the app mentality, and start leaning toward responsive, mobile friendly websites.
Responsive means that your website works well from the large wide-screen desktop monitors down to the 7″ Tablets. The majority believe that should also scale down to the smart phone, but I have to disagree as there’s just not enough real-estate to make it worth-while. I believe the best way is to make the Tablet and desktop versions similar and to make the smart phone limited to just the essentials. For example, if you have a calendar app you should have drag and drop events, with the ability to add fine detail to the events and nice printable calendars. However that’s all fairly useless to the smart phone user. They should only be able to add basic event information and have basic functionality that is quick and easy to use on a small screen. Anything more and it becomes too small and/or too complex and they will move on to someone else’s concept that is easier to use for their device.
One important factor on responsive design sites, is to take into account that mobile device users use a finger or fingers to navigate. Where as the desktop user will primarily use the mouse. So be sure to make it easy as always for the mouse user, but also easy for the finger. Examples would be no drop-down menus, larger link targets and widgets that can take advantage of gestures.
Another factor that many people have forgotten after dial-up disappeared is file size. This is defiantly an issue. Your mobile device users will largely have a connection that experiences delays, dropped signals, and decreased speeds. Therefore your files being served need to be optimized for a small file size, but not so small that it increases the delay because it needs so much processing power to unpack it.
The web development world is changing and standards are still being developed. It’s a wild ride so hang on.
