Mobile Web Development Made Easy
In the past, most site owners who wanted a mobile-friendly site would use a separate
mobile theme for the site with a design specifically for mobile devices. Some would also use different mobile domains. Mobile web development is an important concept that can be influential in the success of your online business.
If youre using a mobile theme, you tell WordPress to switch themes if the visitor is using a mobile, and stick to the desktop theme if he/shes using ayes youve guessed itdesktop PC.
A responsive theme, on the other hand, uses the same theme and similar styling for both sites, but uses a combination of a fluid layout and media queries to make the layout and content different on different-sized devices. It doesnt just work for mobile web development; responsive themes can change the look of a site on tablets or on really large screens, too.
Responsive design Important Concepts
To get to grips with a responsive design, youll need to understand the following web development concepts:
1. Fluid layout: This is a site layout that uses percentages for widths instead of pixels. The effect of this is that when the browser window changes width, so does the site.
2. Media queries: We use media queries to add extra changes to the CSS for devices of a particular width. The widths most commonly targeted are:
3. Mobile devices such as smart phones: These are 320px wide and 480px high, which means the width of the screen, will change when the device is turned around. It is imperative to note this before you get started with mobile web development.
4. Tablet devices: These vary in size but the screen on the iPad, which is by far the most commonly used, is 768px wide by 1024px high. Other tablets such as the Kindle Fire will be smaller.
5. Desktop computers: Their width ranges from 1024px and above. Its common to set a maximum width for our layout so that on very large screens (for example, over 1200px), the site doesnt lay out so far that it makes the content difficult to read.
Before starting, its a good idea to think about your website, its content and functionality, and consider what the best approach might be. Let us assess the web development options available to us. There are five main options for developing a mobile site as follows:
1. Using a mobile plugin: This gives us a mobile-friendly site with the minimum of effort, but doesnt give us much scope to incorporate our own design into the mobile site. Many mobile plugins also dont target tablet devices.
2. Using an off-the-shelf responsive theme: There are a number of free responsive themes available in the WordPress plugin repository. You must know how to tweak them so that your mobile site is more consistent with your desktop site.
3. Using an off-the-shelf responsive theme for mobile devices and our existing desktop theme for desktop computers: We achieve this by using a theme switcher. The advantage here is that we can quickly install a free responsive theme, tweak it to look how we want, and dont lose the benefits of our existing desktop theme for desktop visitors.
4. Making our own theme responsive: We do this by adding a fluid layout and media queries to the desktop theme were already using.
5. Building our own mobile theme and using a switcher to activate it on mobile devices: This is a useful approach when we want our mobile and desktop sites to look different or contain very different content.
If there were a single brand of mobile phones, it would have been a lot simpler since people expect the monopoly to be broken with newer entrants in the field. Any industry is likely to be filled with different brands as competitors venture into the market. The same rule applies for the mobile application and smart phone market. There are various brands of smart phones today, including the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Android based phones. While considering a mobile application developer, you must consider the platform and the operating system. The application would never materialize if your mobile application developer were incompatible with these two aspects.
With every passing day, the competition is getting tougher. There are thousands of mobile application developers on the Internet today and each of them claims to offer quality services. It is suggestive to hire a team that possesses an expertise with different operating systems. For an instance, if majority of your clients use an iPhone, then it is suggestive to develop iPhone-based application whereas if they use Android phones, then you must have a mobile application on Android OS. A wrong developer can turn out to be expensive, since you waste your time, money and resources on it. Therefore, you need to do some basic research on the expertise and the reliability of your mobile application developer.
Check for all the similar applications being offered in the market. Once you assess your competition, determine the extra services you need to offer with your mobile applications. Be careful that your application must not be a replica of something that already exists.
Different kinds of operating systems have different controls in the market today. For an instance, you can develop an Android mobile application and deploy it or put it on sale via different online stores. While selling an Android application, it is not necessary to sell it through Google stores only. On the other hand, you will not be able to sell the iPhone mobile phone applications directly. You will have to get the approval from the Apple team, before they deploy it in the Apple store. Obviously, you will be paid a commission if your application is sold or downloaded. As a rule, iPhone users can download the applications through an Apple store only.
Mobile Phone Platform
Generally, mobile application developers create projects that work only on one device. People only tend to choose the iPhone compatibility since the phone is extremely popular today and developers have budget constraints. Regardless of its popularity and performance, Apple reaches only 30% of the mobile phone market with the iPhone. In order to make the most out of your investment and to connect with the masses, you must consider other operating systems as well. For an instance, Android based phones are popular as well and have about 40% reach in the market.
While looking for mobile application developers, you must hire a team that uses platform-technology to design, develop, license as well as deploy the applications across all devices. In other words, you need cross-platform developers to minimize the development costs.
Internal Processes
The internal processes that manage the digital content on mobile apps must not change. The mobile application should have one point of integration, so that you can make multiple real-time updates on the website, databases, web services and more. Quite a few times, the apps are developed for internal purposes only and are not able to update the
content in real-time.
Content Management System
You must ensure that your mobile application has an easy-to-use content management system . Such a way, your employees, members of the staff or external agency members can use one interface to manage different mobile applications. The content management system should be dynamic in nature, which would allow the non-technical employees to add new pages, images, develop promotional pieces, change content or the entire navigation system. With an advanced content management system, mobile application developers will be able to make changes in real time.
Maintenance
Once your mobile application is built, you will have to maintain it. You will need a team that offers these services. If you have technical resources to maintain the application within the company, then that should be your first priority. Since this technology is more expensive and complicated, you will need an expert to update or maintain your mobile applications. While looking for a mobile application developer, you must ensure that he offers a maintenance program. For the most part, these programs deal with repairing unexpected bugs, adding or supporting new users and future proofing the application.
by: Pranav Thakker
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