Category Archives: iPad

Changes for Mobile Safari in iOS 5

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With Apple’s forthcoming iOS 5 release, there are some specific changes within Mobile Safari that are worth noting. Most of these are of concern to the designer and developer, but others will add some new end user features.

  • Form Input Elements: Mobile Safari provides touch-centric form inputs to ease the user’s entry task. Added in iOS 5 are new types date, datetime, month, time and range (which others might call a “slider”).
  • Kerning Changes: Kerning (“…the adjustment of the space between individual letter forms…”) differences will probably not be noticeable to most everyone. Designers may see differences in line breaks. The comparison of an iPad page shown here reveals just how subtle the changes are.
  • Native-style Scrolling Momentum: Web Apps will now be able to have the type of scrolling behavior found in native apps. This is a nice addition, especially for pages that have a lot of content (think car inventory lists, for example).

User Experience
As for the browsing experience, there are 3 features that will be immediately obvious to end users:

  • Reader: this brings over the same capability seen in Safari 5 to show the main parts of a web page in and easy-to-read format to Mobile Safari.
  • Reading List: Saves online content for offline reading later
  • Tabbed Browsing: A different way to navigate between different web pages that are open in Mobile Safari.

Overall, Apple has also touted improved speed, but what that actually means in a mobile environment where speed is often a function of the cell network performance, remains to be seen.

 

Don’t Build a Mobile Version of Your Desktop Website

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Design for Mobile First.

That’s the position of Luke Wroblewski, a leading voice of an emerging school in web design that seeks to reverse the time-honored practice of deriving a mobile website from the existing desktop version. Wroblewski says don’t build a mobile version from a desktop site, rather build for mobile first. Here’s what he says:

…things have changed so dramatically over the past few years that starting with the desktop may be an increasingly backwards way of thinking about a Web product. Designing for mobile first not only prepares you for the explosive growth and opportunities in this space, it forces you to focus and enables you to innovate. –Luke Wroblewski

Wroblewski is one of the first to have formalized some core principles around the concept of “mobile first”. He’s made a series of presentations on the topic and is writing a book for the A Book Apart series. His positions are well-presented and carefully supported.

Wroblewski has some strong support from other designers.

Create a product, re-imagine one for small screens. Great mobile products are created, never ported — Brian Fling, author Mobile Design and Development

At its core, “mobile first” recognizes that with a major change in consumer behavior underway, web designers must change their thinking and create visual and user experiences for the new paradigm. That paradigm is that very soon, nearly all consumers will primarily access the Internet through a smartphone and not through a laptop or desktop.

A few points to get you thinking:

  • Design for touch
  • Design for multiple screen sizes
  • Design for one-handed use
  • Design for speed
  • Leverage HTML5
  • Understand the potential of location services

Watch, Listen or Read
Find Luke Wroblewski’s slides, audio and video  “Mobile First” presentations here.

Think About It
Spend some time thinking about what the implications are for your current and future customers and share with us your thoughts.

- Do you agree that the time has come for “mobile first” to the method for web designers?

- What are the implications for your current clients?

- How would guide the client into understanding that the mobile site isn’t simply the existing desktop site – only smaller?

 

 

 

The Perfect Father’s Day Gift- Designed in Iowa and Made in the USA

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casesimpl for iPad, MacBook Air and Kindle

Occasionally, we see something so neat that we have to share it – even if it isn’t about us or our products.

We’ve been using a product for the past couple of months called casesimpl. casesimpl is a case for your mobile life. We’re using their iPad case and it is simply terrific. It’s not a cover or tight fitting wrap – it’s what you put your iPad into to go to meetings at a client, throw in a bag to travel or just keep your mobile stuff organized. In my personal case, I put my iPad 2, a Verizon Mi-Fi, business cards, a couple of pens and other adds-and-ends. Often, I leave my MacBook Pro at the office and go to a meeting with just the iPad. casesimpl helps me stay organized and not forget something in the rush to get to a meeting. You’ll appreciate the attention to detail in the design and construction – it’s clear this was designed by a user as opposed to some CAD jockey in a Chinese factory.

casesimpl interior storage. Versatile stretch pockets with a removable hard divider for writing and protection.

casesimpl is based in Des Moines, Iowa and the cases themselves are manufactured in Chicago, Illinois. That’s right – designed AND built right here in the USA. The line encompasses iPad, Kindle and Apple MacBook Air. They come in ballistic nylon or leatherette.

So hop on over to their website (casesimple.com – note the extra “e”) and order one for dad – or yourself. It’s a really great and useful product that fills a need in the market and by picking one up, you can support an entrepreneur here in the USA.

Fullscreen iOS WebApps Not Leveraging Nitro JavaScript Engine

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In iOS 4.3, Apple introduced the Nitro JavaScript engine, which provides substantial speed improvements, up to “…twice as fast“, for JavaScript execution within Mobile Safari.

Yesterday, Maximiliano Firtman, author of the O’Reilly book, Programming for the Mobile Web, shared test results that show webApps run in full screen mode do not access the Nitro engine. A “full screen webApp” is one where the link has been saved to the iOS device home screen (technically known as the “SpringBoard”) and with the addition of an HTML meta tag (apple-mobile-web-app-capable), the HTML page is executed without menu bars.

Firtman reports that he has sent in bug reports about this and some other items to Apple and has had no response – yet. Unfortunately, the silence of Apple just adds fuel to the conspiracy meme.

Firtman’s post has been picked up and repeated throughout the web, most prominently by The Register, and has, for the most part, been set up with a conspiracy spin that infers Apple is doing this on purpose. “Sandbagging webApps” seems to be the most common accusation.

I agree that Apple has done this on purpose, but not for the nefarious reasons many have cited. First of all, the technical reason this is happening may be found in a comment by “Barry” to this post on everythingicafe.com:

A web app when saved to the spring board uses a different app to access and run it. It does not use mobilesafari.app but rather web.app. There seems to be a permission issue.

Second, if one looks at the release schedule for iOS 4.3, it was clearly tied to the launch of iPad 2. I suspect that there are a set low-level of security issues with Nitro, or something else, that were not fully mitigated in time to meet the launch deadline. Thus the decision was made by Apple that Nitro access should be restricted in 4.3.0. The notion that there is some anti-webApp plot by Apple is nonsense, in my opinion.

The real story is that full screen webApps have exactly the same JavaScript performance they enjoyed two weeks ago – and that performance is industry leading on mobile devices.

Defintion of Gamer Changer: iPad

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The term “game changer” crept into the technical lexicon some time ago. It seems that every new idea or a rehash of an old idea is declared to be a “game changer”. It’s gotten so I don’t even hear the words when they are used in a pitch or a presentation any longer.

So I offer up this. The Apple iPad is the definition of game changer. I urge you to watch this video presented at the Apple iPad 2 introduction event. And then reflect on how we’ve had iPad for less than a year.

iPad 2: Were Our Wishes Granted?

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So now that the next Apple iPad is announced, let’s see how many of our wishes from 3/1/11 were granted:

  • Front and Rear Cameras: Yes
  • Improved Screen: Maybe. The discussion centered around graphics performance.
  • Faster Syncing: No, at least no hardware change.
  • Upload Photos from within Mobile Safari: iOS 4.3 does not appear to address this, although the Nitro JavaScript engine for Mobile Safari will bring welcome performance enhancements.

iPad Wishes

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On the day prior to the much-anticipated Apple iPad event on March 2, we’ve put together a short list of wishes for the next generation of the tablet.

  • Front and Rear Cameras: We use our iPad a lot when traveling and being able to video conference with it would be very nice.
  • Improved Screen: Simply some improvement in the sharpness of the screen would be enough for us. We spend a lot of time reading on the iPad.
  • Faster Syncing: It takes too long to sync the iPad with iTunes  over the existing connector – especially if you have movies.
  • Upload Photos from within Mobile Safari: Not strictly an iPad feature, but adding access to the Camera Roll from the browser would be a much-appreciated addition for webApp solutions.