Designing for the Mobile Web

There are more than 50 companies producing mobile telephones in significant and marketable quantities. By 2009, projections indicate there will be 3 billion mobile phone users worldwide. The market for the delivery of Web content to these mobile device users dwarfs the market for desktops. There is theoretically unlimited potential for expansion of the Web (or Web 2.0) into these devices, and we are now on the cutting edge of Web site design for Mobile Web (or the ‘‘Ubiquitous Web,’’ as it is also becoming known). Mobile Web, Web 2.0, and Ubiquitous Web all express the concept of a boisterous, erratically developing electronic frontier.

The mobile device market is huge, but the very small screen sizes, relatively slow and weak processors, stripped down (simplified) operating systems, and limited memory and storage make it difficult to use the Web as efficiently as you can with static desktop computers. As an example, in growing acknowledgment of the importance of the handheld mobile market, and to help develop content specific to that environment, Adobe has reworked its Device Central development module to allow for previewing of Web content on such devices as cell phones and PDAs early in the Web page development cycle.

The discussion in this section begins with an overview of Web design for the Mobile Web. We will discuss the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and review common difficulties hindering Web development (such as the lack of standardization, lack of new technology, network connectivity, hardware, and human factors). We will explore problems unique to developing and delivering Web content to the Mobile Web, look at current Web development and content tools (what role will scalable vector graphics play in content delivery, for example), look at Mobile Web browsers, and hazard a guess as to future technologies for Web site authoring for the Mobile Web. For more information on the MWI, see http://www.w3.org/Mobile/.

Background for Mobile Web design

The Web is designed for physically static devices over a network, using tried-and-true technologies to access, store, and transmit data so that the process of sending and storing the data is entirely transparent to the user. The data transferred over the Web is the entire Web page (including the content), rather than content only. The underpinning of the Web protocols is that they are vendor-neutral and can used by any machine to upload/download content. Some Mobile device providers would appear to take the view that, in order for the Web to function reliably, the coding must be device-dependent. However, the lack of standardization actually hinders the spread of Web technologies to mobile devices because each mobile device has its own proprietary coding scheme that will work on a particular device, but will not be rendered in a similar way on other devices. Therefore, W3C has established the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) to establish a common set of standards that all communications companies can adopt (but are not required to) and work from so that there would be interoperability, cross-platform support, and common display configurations.

Even though we do discuss Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) again in the text, we can point out that, here-and-now, there are no standards. However, because WAP has been used for years, it has become the default standard. Many high-end handheld devices (such as the iPhone, the Sprint Blackberry 8830, Verizon Palm Treo, Samsung SCH-i760, Motorola Q Black, or even the SmartPhone) are coming out with much more capable browsers (for example, Windows Mobile Pocket Internet Explorer and Safari for iPhone).

As in the early days of network chaos (before standardization brought about by common reference to the OSI model), there are a plethora of platforms and physical sizes and types.

Screen sizes and resolutions vary, and a prime objective of MWI has been to bring forth standardized data formats that would be accessible by all Mobile Web devices. The MWI is developing a technology analogous to device drivers (called the Device Description Repository) to cope with the great variety of devices out in the worldwide market. These standards (or guidelines) are available to Web developers in W3Cs Best Practices Software Checker Tool.

One of the questions MWI dealt with was the type of content that was to be displayed on mobile devices (such as mobile phones and derivative smartphones, as well as pagers and PDAs, as shown in, and other handheld devices utilizing Internet access on demand from any location and the tools required to develop that content.

As of July 2007, the Device Independent Authoring Language (DIAL) for the Web authoring tools was still officially a work in progress of the W3C. The purpose of DIAL is to provide a uniform coding structure and syntax that will allow content to be displayed on all handheld devices subscribing to the standard. DIAL is designed to allow the development and display of the typical formatting elements of a Web page, including lists, text, links, objects (images) tables, and forms. Objects would include both images and plug-ins, and forms would be interactive. Coding would conform to the XHTML 2.0 standard.

The 800-pound gorilla in the room is the issue of backward compatibility. No entirely satisfactory technological solution (hardware or software) has yet been reached for accessing the millions of existing Web sites in the Web 2.0 environment.

There are a number of minibrowsers available, but most are stripped down WAP versions of existing full-featured Web browsers (to compensate for the limited bandwidth and simplistic operating systems used in many handhelds). WAP browsers are used throughout most of the world (Japan has its own indigenous standard) to provide all of the basic services of a computer-based Web browser. Examples would be Opera Mobile and Pocket Internet Explorer. Nokia also has its separate (but proprietary) microbrowsers. As of late 2006, a few began to incorporate more advanced Web authoring technologies such as CSS and Ajax.

Current difficulties withWeb usage on mobile devices

Mobile devices were primarily used for sending brief messages, checking the weather, getting lists from the Web, getting stock quotes, placing orders on forms, reviewing documents, graphics development, or editing. The explosive growth of cell phones was powered by the revolutionary capability to provide (and receive) timely information anytime, anyplace reliably. This allowed, for example, the immediate updating of inventory through handheld devices, making plane or hotel reservations online from a cab in the middle of the George Washington Bridge, checking sports scores, updating forms, broadcasting messages all interacting with the Web world when physically away from a computer. The promise of the devices was increased productivity at times and in places that had hitherto been considered unavoidable dead spots in a worker’s day.

But, there are difficulties both in the transmission of data and the receipt and rendering of data. In the transmission of data, access to the Internet is not universal from every location. In addition, because of the different media involved, WAP is merely one in a long and varied chain of links from Point A to Point B, or Point A to Points B, QZ, and FFI. If a link goes down and connectivity is lost, that translates into time and labor lost because the information must be reentered and retransmitted. Network quality is not universal.

The needs of mobile users were found to be different from static Web users in that the devices were mobile and needed to have continuous Web access wherever the user might be. This would mean that in a warehouse where a worker was using a handheld device to check inventory, there could be no dead spots, or weak or intermittent access to the Web, or an intermediary server. Reliability and network connectivity are issues. Limited bandwidth is an issue. And there are human factors. Ease of use is continually proving to be an issue. There are not only physical limitations in the design of mobile devices, small screens, and keypads, but most users of handheld devices are less computer literate than their more sedate desktop-bound types. Last, better filtering and compression algorithms must be put in place to streamline content delivery.

Future of the Mobile Web

No one can predict the future of the Mobile Web. And we have no Edward Bellamy of the Information Age to come forth and offer utopian prognostications. But it would not be unreasonable to anticipate the following:

- There will be standardization of Web content delivery systems.

- There will be an abrupt reduction in the number cell phone manufacturers.

- There will emerge a few dominant wireless network technologies.

- The giants of today (such as Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T) will be knocked out by some unknown kids currently working out of their garages.

- There will be less of an issue with accessibility as wireless connectivity spreads.

- As network infrastructure develops, the slowness of Web access experienced by Blackberry users will cease to be a problem.

- Device capabilities will improve to match the needs of the industry.

In short, what the future holds for mobile devices is that the variety and number of services will continue to improve, bandwidth will increase, and costs will decrease as Web 2.0 comes to flourish.