This category features articles on best and emerging practices for responsive website design, Web apps and native apps. While the mobile Web is still in it's infancy, we can learn from the experiences of professionals who are working on mobile every day. Curated by Derek Allard. Subscribe to the RSS-Feed.
Popular tags in this category: Android, iPad, iPhone, iOS, Tablets, CSS, HTML.
Back in 2009, when coding version 10 of Opera Mobile, my Opera colleagues decided to tune the Opera Mobile build machine so that it would churn out builds not only for common mobile platforms, but for Windows and Linux as well. Originally intended for quality assurance and testing, these desktop builds proved also to be useful for Web development; being able to use Opera Mobile on a desktop machine took away the need to do all testing on a phone, and the mobile browser window was suddenly only an Alt/Command + Tab away from our text editor — exciting!
So, we decided to iron out the wrinkly bits, added a Mac build channel, and turned it into a publicly available developer tool, called Opera Mobile Emulator. Coming in at a fairly small size, Opera Mobile Emulator can be downloaded for free from Opera’s developer website or from the Mac App Store, and installing it is straightforward. The engine and UI are exactly the same as when you run Opera Mobile on a phone, while desktop-specific hooks, such as the profile selector, keyboard shortcuts and command-line flags, give you a bit of extra debugging power.
Read more...The US presidential race is heading into full swing, which means we’ll soon see the candidates intensely debate the country’s hot-button issues. While the candidates are busy battling it out, the Web design world is entrenched in its own debate about how to address the mobile Web: creating separate mobile websites versus creating responsive websites.
It just so happens that the two US presidential candidates have chosen different mobile strategies for their official websites. In the red corner is Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s dedicated mobile website, and in the blue corner is incumbent Barack Obama’s responsive website.
Read more...Validating a design through user testing is necessary for the success of almost any product. And it’s even more critical in the mobile application space, where context and individual devices play an important role in how a product is experienced.
Fortunately, interactive prototyping is a time-tested way to quickly get your design onto a user’s device and into their hands. So, let’s look at why prototyping matters and explore one powerful tool that will enable you to do it quickly.
Read more...Everyone is trying to craft the next beautiful iOS app, but building on Apple’s platform has traditionally required experience in a niche programming language, Objective-C. However, with the release of RubyMotion, anyone can make a completely native iOS app using the power of Ruby.
Developers have tried to get around the Objective-C hurdle by making HTML and JavaScript hybrid apps using tools like PhoneGap and Trigger, but the result can be a substandard user experience. Plus, mobile-centric Web development is yet another narrow skill set that potential developers have to learn.
Read more...Android is an attractive platform for developers, but not all designers share our enthusiasm. Making an app look and feel great across hundreds of devices with different combinations of screen size, pixel density and aspect ratio is no mean feat. Android's diversity provides plenty of challenges, but creating apps that run on an entire ecosystem of devices is rewarding too.
At Novoda, we build Android software for brands, start-ups and device manufacturers. We often work with visual designers who are new to Android. The new Android Design site is the first resource we recommend. You should definitely check it out. However, there is plenty more to pick up! The goal is to create apps that people love to use. Thoughtful UX and aesthetically pleasing visual designs help us get there.
Read more...The term “responsive design” has gathered a lot of well-deserved buzz among Web designers. As you probably know, it refers to an easy way to dynamically customize interfaces for different devices and to serve them all from the same website, with no need for a separate mobile domain.
It solves one major problem, and very elegantly: how to adapt visual interfaces for mobile, tablet and desktop browsers. But when unifying a website, you have to solve problems other than how it will appear in different browsers, which could make the task much more difficult than you first realize.
Read more...Mobile users and mobile usage are growing. With more users doing more on mobile, the spotlight is on how to improve the individual elements that together create the mobile user experience.
The mobile user experience encompasses the user’s perceptions and feelings before, during and after their interaction with your mobile presence — be it through a browser or an app — using a mobile device that could lie anywhere on the continuum from low-end feature phone to high-definition tablet.
Read more...Despite a great deal of mobile innovation, many creators of financial apps still copy their interface patterns from the desktop Web, even though these patterns are not as well suited to the mobile space. Small screens, custom controls, divided attention and fat fingers demand different thinking when designing for mobile.
In this article, we will look specifically at simple mobile transfers of funds from checking to savings accounts, taking what works on the Web and converting it into authentically mobile flows using simple, effective design patterns.
Read more...
Come and put your passions to work at one of America's premier ministries. The Sr. User Experience Analyst position exists to plan, implement, analyze, and present…
Company Description hetras is the first company to build a fully cloud-based application for hotels and global chains of all sizes with offices in Zell am…
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