Going mobile: designing websites for Smartphones, limitations and considerations
吳亞安 · 2011
Due to the recent technology development in mobile devices, more than half of the world has a mobile phone of some kind. Smartphones are in high demand all over the world. Millions of people have access to the internet from their mobile phone, but not all the web sites are accessible, due to lack of optimization or simply because they were not design with the mobile users in mind. Mobile browsers featured in Smartphones have in most cases the same features as their desktop PC counterparts. In order to deliver content to these mobile browsers two factors must be understand: first, the often limited screen size and resolution, and second, the input methods which are different from those in a PC. These two factors have tremendous implications for the methods and techniques in which web content for the mobile web should be created. For the purpose of this research, three operative systems and their respective browsers, iOS (Safari), BlackBerry OS (BlackBerry Browser) and Android (Android Browser) were used as reference. The principal objective of this document is to inform the reader with the main characteristics and limitations of the browsers, input methods and in some cases physical features of these mobile devices. Several methods are presented to help designers and developers to cope with features and limitations of these devices. Methods described in this research include: viewport definition for displaying correctly web content in small screens, a device‘s orientation responsive script to deliver custom content, device detection using CSS media types and media queries, among others. It is possible to deliver mobile-friendly web sites without spending extra time or building a separate site. It is more effective to design for the mobile web from the beginning; this research is a general outline of guidelines and considerations for that purpose.