Hello,

Welcome, and thanks for joining after only a single cryptic tweet.

I'm currently setting up the list and testing some admin features.
Will do a formal announcement and kick-off mail later.

Thanks,

ppk

OK, both to start an actual discussion and to test Yahoo! Groups,
which seems to be buggy right now, here's a question to you.

We all know we should use media queries in order to make our layout
compatible to the many screen sizes out there. BUT: neither IE8 or
lower nor Symbian WebKit (the most-used browsers on the desktop and
mobile side, in other words) support them.

How are we going to solve this issue?

Make the default layout desktop-compatible and overrule it for mobile?
That helps IE users, but not Symbian WebKit users. Besides, I feel
that the mobile view (or at least, the simple view without any frills)
should be the default.

Or are we going to use a clever script? That's possible, I suppose
(reading out window.innerWidth gives you a good clue as to what's
going on)

Or something else entirely?

ppk

What´s wrong with a server-side browsercheck and give the css per device?

> Make the default layout desktop-compatible and overrule it for mobile?
> That helps IE users, but not Symbian WebKit users. Besides, I feel
> that the mobile view (or at least, the simple view without any frills)
> should be the default.

I've been stung by going with the simplest view as the default. That was in the
context of using JavaScript to adapt a layout to a 800px wide view and 1024+
view.

The majority of the audience (on 1024+ wide browsers) tended to get the simple
layout initially and then it would switch to the one with more columns. Rather
disconcerting.

A variation on this might be able to work around the issue:
http://paulirish.com/2009/avoiding-the-fouc-v3/

However, do you get the same type of issues with media queries, or does all the
CSS load before it renders?

-Alastair

>> Make the default layout desktop-compatible and overrule it for mobile?
>> That helps IE users, but not Symbian WebKit users. Besides, I feel
>> that the mobile view (or at least, the simple view without any frills)
>> should be the default.
>
> I've been stung by going with the simplest view as the default. That was in
the context of using JavaScript to adapt a layout to a 800px wide view and 1024+
view.
>
> The majority of the audience (on 1024+ wide browsers) tended to get the simple
layout initially and then it would switch to the one with more columns. Rather
disconcerting.
>
> A variation on this might be able to work around the issue:
http://paulirish.com/2009/avoiding-the-fouc-v3/
>
> However, do you get the same type of issues with media queries, or does all
the CSS load before it renders?

All CSS is loaded and parsed before the page is rendered, but scripts
can fire at any time and lead to ugly flashes as you describe. That's
why a CSS solution to this problem is superior to a JavaScript one.

But a CSS solution may lead to problems in IE8- and Symbian WebKit.

Oh, and a browser detect is never a solution because you just can't
keep up with all the hundreds of browser strings out there, and any
detect you write might misfire when a new browser string enters the
market.

We'll have to find a solution in the default CSS. But if we optimise
the default for IE8 we lose Symbian WebKit, and if we optimise for
Symbian WebKit we lose IE8. Tricky, tricky.

ppk

 

What´s wrong with a server-side browsercheck and give the css per device?

--- In mobile-web@yahoogroups.com, Peter-Paul Koch <pp.koch@...> wrote:
>
> And conditional comments may also work in IE Mobile. But that's really IE
> Mobile's problem. Besides, it's pretty much irrelevant.
>

Does anybody know as what / how the 'new' IE Mobile identifies itself - to be
used within conditional comments. Or shall we really(?) expect it as
'irrelevant'?
I read it basically will be built upon IE6-(shriek)-'s rendering engine - but it
eventually will be in the game as windows phone 7 appears.

btw, hi all :)

Andreas

Hello,

I'm wondering about browser baselines again, and have a few questions
for those among you that build mobile websites for a living.

The basic question is: for which browsers do you develop?

Please also indicate your location; for instance, I wouldn't be
surprised if Symbian is less popular in the US than in Europe.

A few extra questions:

- Why exactly this browser set? I assume you pay attention to browser
quality and (sales) market share, but are there any other reasons?
- Do you and your client contractually agree on the browsers the site
must work in?
- What are your client's expectations of browser testing? Which
browsers/devices does he mention up-front? Which ones do you add
yourself?
- Does every site you create work exactly the same in all mobile browsers?
- If not, what is the most common functionality you leave out? In
which browsers?

Whew, that's quite a lot of questions. I'll leave it at this for now,
although I'll probably revisit this topic in the future.

Thanks,

ppk

Somewhat related... I think something useful this (excellent new) group could
come up with is a set of criteria for rating mobile device/browsers into
different categories.

This should be something along the lines of
http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Device_and_feature_detection_on_the_mobile\
_web#Device_grouping - but not only for Nokia devices.

While there are great device characteristics datasets out there that help
provide feature-by-feature knowledge, an important first step is to be able to
carve up the device space into broad, meaningful categories. Ideally this would
be universal, but in the real world it probably skews geographically.

If we, a community, can agree on - dare I say 'standardise'? - some categories,
it might make it easier to communicate to clients/users/etc what a given mobile
site is intended or warranted to work upon. (Also see the jQuery support matrix
http://jquerymobile.com/gbs/ )

Hopefully no-one really believes 'mobile web development' means devices with a
screen width of 320px or nothing:
http://labs.thesedays.com/2010/07/16/10-tips-for-designing-mobile-websites

James

James Pearce
http://tripleodeon.com

--- In mobile-web@yahoogroups.com, Peter-Paul Koch <pp.koch@...> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm wondering about browser baselines again, and have a few questions
> for those among you that build mobile websites for a living.
>
> The basic question is: for which browsers do you develop?
>
> Please also indicate your location; for instance, I wouldn't be
> surprised if Symbian is less popular in the US than in Europe.
>
> A few extra questions:
>
> - Why exactly this browser set? I assume you pay attention to browser
> quality and (sales) market share, but are there any other reasons?
> - Do you and your client contractually agree on the browsers the site
> must work in?
> - What are your client's expectations of browser testing? Which
> browsers/devices does he mention up-front? Which ones do you add
> yourself?
> - Does every site you create work exactly the same in all mobile browsers?
> - If not, what is the most common functionality you leave out? In
> which browsers?
>
> Whew, that's quite a lot of questions. I'll leave it at this for now,
> although I'll probably revisit this topic in the future.
>
> Thanks,
>
> ppk
>

> Somewhat related... I think something useful this (excellent new) group could
come up with is a set of criteria for rating mobile device/browsers into
different categories.

For now I use support for touch events, media queries, and meta
viewport as criteria. My (very preliminary) conclusions can be found
at http://quirksmode.org/mobile/mobilemarket.html ; sort by
browserRating.

And of course John Resig is doing superb work with the jQuery Mobile
graded browser support, as you already said. I'll follow it closely,
and right now I wholly agree with his conclusions.

> If we, a community, can agree on - dare I say 'standardise'? - some
categories, it might make it easier to communicate to clients/users/etc what a
given mobile site is intended or warranted to work upon. (Also see the jQuery
support matrix http://jquerymobile.com/gbs/ )
>
> Hopefully no-one really believes 'mobile web development' means devices with a
screen width of 320px or nothing:
http://labs.thesedays.com/2010/07/16/10-tips-for-designing-mobile-websites

What a horrid little article. I especially disliked the advice to
disable zooming.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ppk, freelance front-end consultant,
agent, and trainer
http://www.quirksmode.org/about/
------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems that some new versions of Symbian WebKit support media queries. On my
blog I have but the following:

@media handheld, screen and (max-width: 800px), screen and (max-device-width:
800px){
     /* the styles for small screens */
}

Recently I bought a Nokia 5800 and I checked that the browser shows the layout
as intended, so I was confused when I read that Symbian WebKit does not support
media queries. So I just made a small test page to see which condition meets the
browser capabilities. The address of the page is
http://greatgonzo.net/examples/css_media_test.html and it shows that even
without viewport meta tag the browser gets max-width into account and
max-device-width condition also gets satisfied.

I understand that there are many different versions of the Symbian browser and
probably only the newer ones support media queries. The version of the browser
on my phone is shown as BrowserNG/7.2.5.2.

All the best,
Gonzo

I asked this yesterday, too, but because the list has grown by 30%
since then, and there were only very few replies, I'll repeat my
question:

***

Hello,

I'm wondering about browser baselines again, and have a few questions
for those among you that build mobile websites for a living.

The basic question is: for which browsers do you develop?

Please also indicate your location; for instance, I wouldn't be
surprised if Symbian is less popular in the US than in Europe.

A few extra questions:

- Why exactly this browser set? I assume you pay attention to browser
quality and (sales) market share, but are there any other reasons?
- Do you and your client contractually agree on the browsers the site
must work in?
- What are your client's expectations of browser testing? Which
browsers/devices does he mention up-front? Which ones do you add
yourself?

Thanks,

ppk
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ppk, freelance front-end consultant,
agent, and trainer
http://www.quirksmode.org/about/
------------------------------------------------------------------

I find this to be an unusual request but I'm new to mobile development. Like the
desktop, I don't code to a browser but to the standard elements and properties I
think work on all of them. I test on an iPhone and Android only right now
because it's convenient and, like I said, I'm brand new to this.

For the Japanese market, the primary user base (+100m) use fashion phones and
browse the web regularly. These mobiles have little to no JS support, weak CSS
support and a whole lot of propriety stuff (emoji, flash lite etc.) that clients
expect you to use/consider. Carriers dictate mobile specs in Japan and clients
expect designs to support the three main carriers.

Until very recently, users were basically eligible for a free mobile every two
years so you didn't need to look back beyond this in terms of feature support.

Smartphone usage is around 5% (primarily iPhone and Android) but growing and
there is increasing interest in designing for these platforms. The differences
between Japanese fashion phones and smartphones is such that you have to branch
design. For smartphones, I look at iPhone, Android, Opera Mobile core that
degrades nicely for Opera Mini and Symbian 3.

Cheers

Kyle

PPK,

In the US at least, while there is a lot of interest in other platforms, when
investments are made they are being made into iOS. This is largely due to their
device roadmap be largely determined by their traffic stats which are often
80-90% iPhone, iPad & iPod touch.

For example in most stats we are privy to, iPod touch is often consuming more
traffic that all Android devices combined (which is why I frequently call BS on
the recent "Android Explosion" as reported by the stats firms. I just don't see
it as a viable market for most companies yet once you look at their data).

To generalize the percentage of what we are seeing people invest in:

60% iPhone/iPod touch
20% iPad
15% Android phones
5% BlackBerry Torch

This is largely for US-based businesses, but surprisingly we've found to be
pretty much the same for our foreign clients too.

To save our clients time and money, we typically recommend focusing on a signal
platform, typically iPhone, for the first release. While we could make it cross
platform out of the gate, this significantly increases cost and complexity and
often lowers the experience in the most capable device. But I am also a strong
advocate of the taking a Best Possible Experience approach over cross browser
compatibility.

-Brian


Brian Fling // +1 206 351-6060 m
pinchzoom.com  //  we make amazing mobile experiences
twitter: fling  //  aim/skype: brianfling

buy my book Mobile Design & Development
(http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596155452)


--- In mobile-web@yahoogroups.com, Peter-Paul Koch <pp.koch@...> wrote:
>
> I asked this yesterday, too, but because the list has grown by 30%
> since then, and there were only very few replies, I'll repeat my
> question:
>
> ***
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm wondering about browser baselines again, and have a few questions
> for those among you that build mobile websites for a living.
>
> The basic question is: for which browsers do you develop?
>
> Please also indicate your location; for instance, I wouldn't be
> surprised if Symbian is less popular in the US than in Europe.
>
> A few extra questions:
>
> - Why exactly this browser set? I assume you pay attention to browser
> quality and (sales) market share, but are there any other reasons?
> - Do you and your client contractually agree on the browsers the site
> must work in?
> - What are your client's expectations of browser testing? Which
> browsers/devices does he mention up-front? Which ones do you add
> yourself?
>
> Thanks,
>
> ppk
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ppk, freelance front-end consultant,
> agent, and trainer
> http://www.quirksmode.org/about/
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>

> iPod touch is often consuming more traffic that all Android devices combined
(which is why I frequently call BS on the recent "Android Explosion" as reported
by the stats firms. I just don't see it as a viable market for most companies
yet once you look at their data)

I don't disagree with the general hypothesis, but I think it's important for
newcomers to the mobile web not to confuse A) raw market penetration, B) web
usage (or often, the very different web+app ad traffic), and hence C) design
targets.

All three are causally interlinked in a multi-dimensional rabbits-and-foxes sort
of way

i.e if no one develops sites that work on platform X, then users of platform X
won't use the web, ad campaigns that target platform X will have their budgets
cut - and then the AdMob stats (which are apparently taken as gospel by just
about everyone) skew down.

On the other hand... imagine if the jQuery mobile team, say, king-made a
particular obscure browser by ensuring brilliant UI support for it. a sites
using that library will suddenly become compelling for those users - who as a
result should use it more often. If that site was something as large as, say,
Facebook... then the effect on the feedback loop from that simple stance would
be significant.

Personally, I'm on a crusade against mobile web sites with blue pinstripe
backgrounds - little will encourage an Android user to return to a site less
than a tawdry effort to pastiche an entirely different phone's OS ;-)

James

James Pearce
http://tripleodeon.com &c

James,

I totally and 100% agree with you.

I try and encourage all clients to support all the top browsers, the problem
we're seeing is their isn't always a strong ROI in delivering multiple
experiences. Clients often have very high expectations of the experience however
rarely the budget to see it through on all the "Class A" devices.

The sentiment we are seeing in the marketplace is best summarized by Joe
Hewitt's tweet:
"I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until
2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won't wait."

-Brian


--- In mobile-web@yahoogroups.com, "James Pearce" <jamesgpearce@...> wrote:
>
> > iPod touch is often consuming more traffic that all Android devices combined
(which is why I frequently call BS on the recent "Android Explosion" as reported
by the stats firms. I just don't see it as a viable market for most companies
yet once you look at their data)
>
> I don't disagree with the general hypothesis, but I think it's important for
newcomers to the mobile web not to confuse A) raw market penetration, B) web
usage (or often, the very different web+app ad traffic), and hence C) design
targets.
>
> All three are causally interlinked in a multi-dimensional rabbits-and-foxes
sort of way
>
> i.e if no one develops sites that work on platform X, then users of platform X
won't use the web, ad campaigns that target platform X will have their budgets
cut - and then the AdMob stats (which are apparently taken as gospel by just
about everyone) skew down.
>
> On the other hand... imagine if the jQuery mobile team, say, king-made a
particular obscure browser by ensuring brilliant UI support for it. a sites
using that library will suddenly become compelling for those users - who as a
result should use it more often. If that site was something as large as, say,
Facebook... then the effect on the feedback loop from that simple stance would
be significant.
>
> Personally, I'm on a crusade against mobile web sites with blue pinstripe
backgrounds - little will encourage an Android user to return to a site less
than a tawdry effort to pastiche an entirely different phone's OS ;-)
>
> James
>
> James Pearce
> http://tripleodeon.com &c
>