What’s the Mobile Web and who is using it?
The mobile web refers to the internet as accessed by users who browse the via cell phones or other handheld devices – and it’s a rapidly growing property.
- As of December 2007, at least 58% of adult Americans had used a cell phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) for non-voice data activities (Pew Internet and American Life Project, Mobile Access to Data and Information, March 5, 2008).
- "The number of U.S. residents using mobile devices to access news and information more than doubled to 63.2 million between January 2008 and January 2009" (Mobile Internet usage more than doubles in January, CNet, March 16, 2009).
Let's be clear: The mobile web extends far beyond professionals using Blackberries. Pew’s 2007 survey showed that
- 21% of users who routinely accessed data via a handheld device made only $20,000 to $40,000 a year.
- Use was distributed evenly between respondents with high school, college and graduate school degrees, and most prevalent among people between 18 and 49.
- 29% of users who used their handheld devices for access on a typical day had no other means of access to the web.
In the face of such rapid expansion the legal aid community should be thinking about providing web services via the mobile web. That generally involves creating a different website (or style sheet) for mobile users because traditionally designed websites are often unreadable on the tiny screens of handheld devices.
The following resources offer an introduction, some best practices and evaluation tools to help you get started.
General Resources
Design/Developer Resources
- W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 - This document specifies Best Practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices. The principal objective is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices. The recommendations refer to delivered content and not to the processes by which it is created, nor to the devices or user agents to which it is delivered.
- Mobile Usability 2009 (July 20, 2009) Jakob Nielsen's report on usability on the mobile web. Discusses the challenges of creating usable mobile content.
- Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998 (Jakob Neilsen's AlertBox, February 17, 2009) - Usability tips to improve mobile web browsing.
- Smashing Magazine: Mobile Web Design Trends for 2009 Highlights current trends, challenges, and tips for creating mobile sites. Also includes showcase of effective mobile designs.
- Effective Design for Multiple Screen Sizes - Strategies and techniques for dealing with multiple screen sizes in mobile development.
- Character Encoding Issues and the Mobile Web - Probably more than anyone needs to know about character encoding. Synopsis: If the device does not have the font installed (Greek, Russian, etc.) it can’t display the characters. Many mobile devices do not support the full unicode character set and only have fonts that are relative to the region where the device was sold.
Tools
- Mobile Site Evaluation Tool - The ready.mobi testing tool evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards. The Ready.mobi tool will crawl your mobile site and generate reports from a range of useful information.
- Opera Mini - Mobile phone browser.
- W3C Mobile Checker - A code evaluation tool from W3C. This is a good way to test your code get tips for fixing problems and optimizing mobile delivery.
- Mobile Device Detection - A function for PHP sites to detect mobile devices and re-direct users to a mobile site if necessary. This function is free for non-profit/non-commercial use.
