Author: agup

Migrating from Desktop to Mobile: 6 steps for success

If you have only one web site that is built for desktop browsers then you definately need to read this post. The one-size website-fits-all days are gone along with the AMC Gremlin. Mobile is a much different world than desktop and your visitors, users and customers will know that. This post is based on a presentation that I did at GIS in the Rockies 2012, and another blog post I wrote called 3 Steps for Determining if Your Website is Mobile Ready.

The presentation mentions GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, however it applies to anyone considering mobile.

Why care about mobile? For once the internet analyst firms are clear on one thing: mobile device sales have  surpassed desktop sales world-wide, yep I mean not just in the good ol’ U.S.A, around January’ish 2012. There are more than 835 million mobile users now, and studies show that people are spending the majority of their free time using their devices. And the patterns they use to interact with the devices are becoming ingrained and, for better or for worse, expected. And that expectation has reached a fervored pitch as the iPhone fanboys (and fangirls) demonstrated when the iPhone 5 launched. Everyone wants the latest and greatest even if it’s not all that different.

What about mobile user expectations? Mobile users have significantly different expectations on performance, look-and-feel, and capabilities. There are also differences between devices, for example as you may already know an Android user interface is fairly different from iPhone. Catering to those needs will boost your chances of success. So, here’s just a sampling:

  • Many different screen sizes. Typically smaller screen sizes and a wide vareity of screen pixel densities.
  • The mouse is gone. Navigation is done using fingers for gestures such as pinch and swipe. Greasy, french fry picking fingers are much less precise than any computer mouse.
  • Less memory. Phones have less memory and they can be slower than your high-powered laptop.
  • Poor internet connection. There are no gaurantees on a mobile internet connection, unless you happen to be dragging a CAT6 ethernet cable with you everwhere you go. Connections can be spotty and 4G connections can be inconsistent.
  • Battery life is awful. If you are at a conference, for example, using the phone heavily may kill the battery in  4 – 5 hours. Tablets are typically a bit better. In comparison, desktop computers are always plugged in.
  • Not all mobile devices are the same. iPhone and iPad run a different operating system from Android. Not only are the platforms completely different underneath, but users have different expectations of each platform. You can’t share the same code between iOS and Android, or even Windows Phone.

How about those six steps you mentioned? It’s these differences that really drive the six migration steps. And, these suggestions apply to all the different approaches to mobile whether you are building for mobile web, hybrid, native or responsive*:

  1. Start prototyping today. Let your developers loose to start playing and to get an idea the capabilities of different devices and operating systems. Have them use your existing web site content.
  2. Analyze your existing website usage. Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to analyze what browser and operating systems your visitors are using. Look to see if there are any trends related to mobile usage. If you don’t use online analytics, there are also tools that can examine your existing web site logs.
  3. Reevalute all use cases and workflows. Mobile is so different from desktop. Refresh your approach on how to work your magic in that enviroment by taking into account how people use their smartphone everyday.
  4. Expect that you will need to rewrite code. Don’t try to make the code fit if it doesn’t meet the requirements. Besides, sometimes it’s a good thing to rebuild so that you clean house and bring a fresh perspective.
  5. Buy as many devices as possible. Since all devices are different, the more you can test on the better. For example, have as many types of Android and iOS devices running different OS versions on several different cell providers.
  6. Dig deep into browser differences. All browsers are different, especially mobile browsers. Check out caniuse.com as your next new best friend.

* A short note on Responsive websites. These use CSS3 media queries to detect and control what HTML content is visible to certain devices. CSS3 is generally considered to be one of the three technologies that together make up HTML5. Those three components are HTML (version 5) + Cascading Style Sheets (version 3) +  some new JavaScript APIs. NOTE: all three of these technologies are built into the browser by the browser vendors such as Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple.

Spam and Web ads are annoying but much better than TV ads

For now my blog will continue to be ad free. Full disclosure: I’ve had two offers in the last month to expose my visitors to ads. The presumption is that I would make some (albeit small) amount of money. However, I’ve done the homework and know that the advertisers make the big bucks and not the advertisees.

Ads in all forms continue to plague the earth because some surveys consistently show that they work. The math is stark and the math simple. Someone is responding to spam email, even the icky ones. Someone is clicking on those web ads, and someone claims to be watching TV ads and even going so far as saying they are effective. Gasp! I will reluctantly agree that some ads are useful for communicating new products or features, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.

I recently read about a survey claiming that 53% of online consumers said a TV ad had influenced them to purchase a product or service in the last twelve months. My heart nearly stopped. Yikes! Who are these people? Speaking on behalf of my own brain, it automatically shuts down within 30 milliseconds of an ad starting on TV or Hulu, or YouTube. Sometimes I can barely read a news article because my brain automatically blurs out 3/4’s of the page where presumably the evil ads are lurking.

Here’s a fact. When you watch prime time television you will be brainwashed and turned into a zombie through the constant exposure of 50 – 70 ads per hour. I’ll repeat that in case you missed it: 50 to 70 advertisements in a single hour. I can tell you this with certainty because I sat down one night and decided to convert percentage of ad time per hour into a meaningful number that anyone could understand. If you watch two TV shows back-to-back that’s possibly 100 to 140 ads that have soaked into your sleep addled brain. And, these are the actual ads and the numbers don’t include embedded product placements that are getting increasingly brazen.

After I had a grasp on the level of digital bombardment we were receiving from TV ads, I was able to take some of the full page, online, take-temporary-control-of-the-entire-browser ads with a bit more perspective. I also said a silent praise for DISH Network’s Hopper.

Maybe I’m writing this blog post because an ad told me too.

Bye bye IPv4 and the sooner the better

I was surprised today when I read on BBC that Europe had begun rationing their remaining 16 million IPv4 addresses. What surprised me  was not that we were finally running out, but the fact that I had scanned all the major U.S. headlines today and I didn’t see a peep about it.

The beginning of the end started for real in February of 2011 when IANA issued the final pool of 16 million IPv4 addresses. And, now Europe is dipping into the final bucket.

Well this is a heads-up to all my IT friends since it will eventually affect anyone who works with computers. Internet Protocol is how computers direct traffic to each other both inside the firewall, within your home and out on the public internet. If you haven’t seen an IPv6 address before it looks like this: 1001:0cb9:66b3:0042:1234:8a2e:2851:7334. It’s quite a bit harder to type than IPv4 addresses which look like 192.168.0.1. But…IPv4 allowed for only 4,294,967,296 addresses, which in today’s terms seems quite small for some reason.

So what does all this mean? As of today, it’s not real clear how much of the public, world wide web will work properly using IPv6 TCP/IP requests. There have been reports of major companies enabling IPv6 and there have been some international efforts to promote awareness and cooperation to upgrade. My guess is that for some period of time both IPv4 and IPv6 will have to live side-by-side until the vast majority of routers, phones, computers and servers get upgraded.

One thing is clear that the faster systems get upgraded the smoother the transition will occur.

References

What is IPv6

World IPv6 Launch