Mobile Web Development

Once upon a time, writing a webpage for a mobile phone meant that you had to really limit what you were doing. Mobile phone development had three main limitations:

• Small screen size


• Limited markup capability


• Slow network connection

The screens were very very small on older mobile phones. This meant that not much could be displayed. On top of that, the markup languages that were supported could not do very much. Long ago, only WML was supported. Later devices would support XHTML Basic Profile. This was pretty close to true HTML, but still only a subset.

What's really exciting now however, is that mobile browsers have, for the most part, surpassed the general capabilities of desktop browsers. The primary reason for this is due to the fact that Internet Explorer is still dominating desktop browsers, and the fact that mobile phones have a very quick renewal cycle.
Modern mobiles such as the iPhone, Android phones and webOS devices all have browsers that are HTML5 compatible. On the desktop, you have Firefox, Safari and Chrome that also have these capability, but they aren't in such widespread usage, so you can't design your site with the expectations that HTML5 will be available. Once Internet Explorer 9 comes out, all the major browsers will support it. Microsoft will probably do something wrong with their implementation like they always do, so we will probably have to wait until at least Internet Explorer 10 or 11 until the desktop catches up.

So, to design a mobile site today, we still have the screen issue. But this is no where near of a concern as it used to be. The Nokia 3390 had a 84x48 resolution screen and the Nokia 3560, which had a full XHMTL browser had only a 176x208 screen. Modern devices are giving at least a 480x320 screen and upwards of 854x480. This is still much less than the desktop, but is still around the same size that was common to desktops only a decade ago. Though, the physical screen size still has a lot of limitations as much of the increase in resolution was due to increasing the pixel-per-inch count.

But, when it comes to the markup language, we now have the ability to go full force with some of the exciting technologies found in HTML5 such as the database storage and offline features. Markup language is no longer a limiting force in mobile development, quite the opposite, in fact. Mobile websites will actually have more advanced features than their desktop counterparts. Very exciting!

The last limitation, network speed, is also fast disappearing. While mobile phone networks aren't quite as fast as a cable modem, 3G networks are now covering most populated areas. This means we can at least expect speeds that are about ten times faster than dialup internet. With 4G starting to appear, some areas now actually do have cable internet-like speeds.