Mobile Web Dev Guidance
Project Liike aims to help developers build mobile web solutions. To do that, we work off of a prioritized backlog to ensure we’re always working on the most important challenges.
We need you to help make sure we ARE in fact working on the most important thing at any given time. Please add the challenges you think are most important, vote a topic up if it’s already on the list, and use all your votes. We will use this to influence our backlog. For more info, check out http://liike.github.com Thanks!
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When should I consider jQuery Mobile or other mobile web frameworks/libraries?
There are a number of powerful frameworks and libraries to help you build mobile web experiences. When should they be considered and what factors make them a less-than-appropriate choice?
17 votes -
Should I build a single-page interface or are full-page refreshes acceptable?
For clarity, a single-page interface (SPI) will load all necessary web assets (HTML, CSS, scripts, images) when the site first loads and all UI updates occur through AJAX calls rather than behaving like a normal web experience that refreshes the whole page for each user action.
This question also hints at the question, "How much should a web app feel like a native app?" There are varying opinions on this.
Some can consider SPIs an optimization of sorts and could also be related to the "future migration to PhoneGap" question.
19 votesstarted ·
AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We’re starting with finding out if there is already some existing research in this area and if there is anything specific related to mobile since most of the SPI discussion is equally related to desktop web experiences.
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How much JavaScript should my mobile experience use and what should it be used for?
This is related to the "Single-page Interface" question, but we'll keep them separate for now.
Here are some associated questions:
- What animations are [in]appropriate for mobile web experiences?
- What micro JavaScript libraries should be considered for various tasks?
- How much JavaScript is too much? What are the factors that help me decide?12 votes -
How should I perform pre-production testing across multiple devices?
Other associated questions:
- How should I setup my environment?
- What are the emulators/simulators I can use?
- How much testing can be automated vs. manual? How?
- Are there any useful tools/services that can be used?
- How can I monitor CPU and memory utilization on the device?8 votesplanned ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
This actually turned out to be more difficult than we expected. Basically we’re taking a multi-prong approach that uses desktop browsers, emulators/simulators, as well as physical and virtual hardware devices such as the DeviceAnywhere service. You can find the topic in our docs repo under the title of “Testing Mobile Web Experiences” over at http://github.com/liike/docs.
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What can I do to optimize the payload of my site/app for mobile devices and their networks?
We certainly don't want to send any more data to the device than we absolutely need to. Here are some associated questions:
- What are some strategies for concatenating/minifying files while still getting the benefits of caching?
- How do I implement responsive images so the correct image is used for particular devices?
- What are the best practices for optimizing image and script files for transmission to and parsing in the browser?9 votesplanned ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We’re still building the basic “Works” experience at the moment, but once we start the “Wow” experience we’ll have enough in place to begin comparing different strategies.
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How can I enable touch gestures on my mobile web experience?
Other associated questions:
- How consistent is touch support across the different mobile browsers?
- How can I create intuitive UIs with touch gestures?
- Which touch gestures are the most useful? Which one's should I stay away from?12 votes -
Are there any differences working with RESTful web services (WCF Web API, OData) in a Mobile Web project?
Just want an open discussion on best practices around RESTful web services with WCF Web API and WCF Data Services/OData being 2 examples. I know that I might build my RESTful web services differently for mobile web architectures but want to get others views on the topic.
8 votes -
Guidance on Device Capabilities detection
Best practices and resources available.
8 votesstarted ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We are using an approach here that uses both server-side device detection and client-side feature detection. So far the feedback has been very positive. As a side-note, this has the possibility of becoming a reusable component (opposed to being tied specifically to the Mileage Stats Mobile reference application).
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What is an appropriate experience for non-HTML5 mobile browsers?
We know this is this is a huge "it depends" but we suspect most mobile web experiences will have to decide at some point (including this project). What are the determining factors?
7 votesstarted ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
Rather than answer this question directly, we’ve identified a few different experiences (Wow, Works, and Whoops) based on browser capabilities. This likely fits in the Works experience and we’re using roughly a full-page refresh approach instead of the ajaxy single-page interface.
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1 vote
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1 vote
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How can I enable location services on my mobile web experience?
Associated questions include:
- What spacial data stores and APIs are available?
- Which spacial data stores and APIs cater specifically to mobile scenarios?
- How do I account for users who disable/disallow location services?
- How should I think about mapping integration and what are the gotchas (if any)?4 votesplanned ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We are contemplating a number of different features in Mileage Stats Mobile that will use location services such as remembering the name of a filling station and determining the appropriate unit of measure to use (gallons/litres).
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What can I do today to make migration to PhoneGap (or similar solutions) easier in the future?
A common scenario for some applications might be to start with a mobile web experience today and add device-specific features later. Using PhoneGap, or similar solutions, allow you to reuse most (if not all) of the web assets. Are there things we should or should not do today that will make this (potential) migration easier? Perhaps an SPI?
1 vote -
Which assets from my existing web site/app (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images) can I reuse in the mobile web experience?
We can suspect most of the backend of the applications (data layer, business logic, and even some MVC controllers) will be able to be reused on the mobile experience. However, how do we make this determination for front-end scripts, images, and HTML views?
Answering this question can help set expectations for web teams as they take on the endeavor of building mobile web experiences from existing desktop web experiences.
15 votesstarted ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We’re going to create an article for this on the project site and keep it updated as we build the reference implementation listing all of the assets we were able to use as-is, use but edited, and not used.
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4 votes
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What can I do to accommodate the various screen sizes accessing my site/app?
We expect this one to be a big one that may have to get broken down into multiple (more specific) questions, but we want to keep the questions specific to business requirements rather than specific to the implementation.
Here are some business-specific questions that may be part of this challenge:
- How to respond to changes in orientation (landscape vs portrait)?
- How do we handle differences in dpi/ppi?And some implementation-specific questions:
- How should I balance client-side feature detection with server-side device detection?
- How should I go about defining device classification/segmentation?
- How can I combine responsive… more12 votesplanned ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We intend to use responsive design combined with device detection to address this challenge. Definitely on the backlog.
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How should I go about choosing between a mobile web experience and a native app that is specific to the device hardware/platform?
Assuming that you want to have a single code base and still target multiple devices, should you build your application using HTML (running in a browser), use one of the cross-platform toolkits such as PhoneGap (running as a native app), or build an application specific to the hardware/platform (iOS, Android, WP7)? What are the business drivers to consider and the right questions to ask?
3 votesstarted ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
We have a topic in our docs repo (http://github.com/liike/docs) called “Architectural Choices for Mobile Experiences” where we intend to capture the good guidance that already exists on the web today and attribute the authors along with a summary of our findings.
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How can I enable my mobile experience to be used when the device is offline?
Other associated questions:
- How can you persist data locally?
- How can you sync data once a connection is reestablished?7 votesunder review ·AdminDon Smith
(Program Manager, Project Liike)
responded
Due to the inconsistencies across the devices that claim to support this feature (and we’re not even talking about the ones that don’t support it) we’re not yet sure if we can do anything in this area. The industry might just not be ready yet, but we’re considering it.
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What can I do to ensure my mobile site/app is adhering to accessibility best practices?
Other associated questions:
- What does accessibility mean for mobile devices?
- What techniques can we leverage from the desktop browser?
- What techniques are different and specific to mobile (and touch) devices?1 vote
