There are two ways to have a mobile friendly site – a mobile website or a mobile responsive site. Believe it or not, there is an argument among web-developers as to the merits of each.

A Mobile Site

This type of website is the earliest type of mobile sites. This is a different site with content specifically designed for mobile viewing alone. It would often have its own URL such as m.domain.com, while the full site will be at www.domain.com. Companies like Yahoo! utilised sites like these. This site may have a totally different look and feel from the original website, unless a lot of care was taken to create both sites similarly.

A mobile site tends to load faster because the content is specifically designed for mobile devices. You also have full control of the elements of the design so you can have the look and layout specifically the way you want it, regardless of what the main website has.

The drawback to the mobile site is that you have two different sites, with different code-bases. If you need to make changes to the main site, then the developers may also need to make changes to the mobile site, and in some cases, the developers may be different. You may end up having different experiences on both because of that. Also, it becomes more costly the more changes that are required.

A Mobile Responsive Site

A mobile responsive site is a website that automatically adjusts parameters to suite the device viewing display size. So you may have code within the main site that adjusts the layout of your dividers and size of your fonts as the screen size goes down.

A responsive site has the same look and feel as the main site, because it is the main site; it’s the same design elements, only formatted for a different screen. Because of the adaptive nature, the screen can be adjusted for multiple screen sizes, so one layout for desktop, another for mobile, and another for in-between devices such as tablets. Maintenance is easy because it’s only one code base that is being maintained, and only one developer is usually required.

The disadvantages of the responsive site are that is takes longer to load than a mobile site, and more expensive to develop initially. The site takes longer because it’s the main site being loaded and then resized and laid out on the screen. And because a responsive site takes more time to develop, the cost may be higher, but it will be cheaper to maintain.

Another disadvantage is that you have less control of the layout for different screens. For example, if you have a search for your side in your sidebar for a desktop display, on a mobile the search bar may be at the bottom, which may not be effective.

The Skinny

This website has a mobile site. If you view it on a mobile screen, it’s totally different to the main site. To be honest, I only found out about the mobile responsive site when redesigning my personal website – www.sachinganpat.com. If you view that site on a mobile, you will see it looks almost the same, just all the elements one under the other. If you re-size the browser you will see how the elements move to fit it.

So what should you do?

If you cater mainly to mobile users, then it may be worthwhile to have a mobile site, however, given the breadth of devices browsing the web now, plus the bandwidth speeds and capabilities of these devices, having a mobile responsive site is the best way forward.

It’s also important to note that Google has stated that mobile responsive sites should be the preferred choice of web designers. So if you’re into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), then that’s added motivation.

If you can’t change your site right now, don’t make it a problem. Most mobile browsers try as best as possible to allow web content to be viewed. It’s still a good practice to check how your website is displayed on the different screens.

Your website is your image, and you want to look good no matter what.

Original article: Two options to pick from.'">Choosing your mobile web site? Two options to pick from.

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In an address to the audience during a recently concluded seminar entitled “Cloud Vision”, the Honourable Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education (MSTTE), Fazal Karim, said that technology services should take into consideration our mobile penetration. The seminar was held by the Trinidad and Tobago Coalition of Service Industries (TTCSI) and the Trinidad and Tobago Information and Communications Technology Society.

In the Caribbean, there is an average mobile penetration of 62%, compare that to Trinidad and Tobago with a penetration of 141%, which means that many people have more that one phone. This is quite high, but the question is what type of phones; unfortunately we don’t have an answer for that. Based on data gathered from Asymco, 70% of worldwide phone are non-smartphones. See Chart 1.

The US is not much different, with about 65% of phones being non-smartphones (see Chart 2). My guess is that the landscape is no different here.

So if we are to develop applications to take advantage of our mobile penetration, what platform should we develop on? The answer, all depends on who our market is.

If you are building for a niche, with graphic user interfaces (GUI) then you should develop in one of the other OS platforms. I think that Android will have a higher penetration among smartphone users, since many low cost manufacturers are porting the OS onto their hardware as it is free and open source. This may mean though that the OS may become heavily fragmented with developers having a difficult time coding their application to support the many versions out there. iPhone has less fragmentation, but the price premium may keep it out of reach of lower income households. See Chart 3 on the current US OS share and installed base for smartphones.

HTML5 has a lot of promise, but this is dependent on web services being available on mobile phones. This usually comes at a price and may not be available wherever there is cell service. Additionally, not all mobile platforms may natively support HTML5 in the phone’s browser, essentially rendering the application unusable.

If you are building an application for the masses, then the application should be SMS (Short Message Service) based. SMS will work on both smart and non-smart phones, is a familiar interface for many users, and will work reliably once there is cell service.

In conclusion, mobile applications being built for citizens at large, should still operate on the SMS platform. In the foreseeable future, I think it is unlikely that smartphone penetration would overtake non-smartphone penetration. However, skills should be kept up-to-date to take advantage of any changes in policy or technology that allows smartphone use to increase dramatically.

Original article: Mobile Applications for the Mobile Phone Market

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