Friday, October 16, 2009 at 2:59 PM
(Cross-posted on the Google Code Blog)This week, we've been celebrating all things mobile across Google. Of course, this wouldn't be complete without a component for mobile web developers! Two months ago we asked you to make the web faster. Now, we've asked the Google Mobile team for some best practices, tips, and resources for mobile web development, and we've come up with a few things we wanted to share. "Go Mobile!" with our Make the mobile web faster article.
10 comments:
as i can't reply to the (great) article you're referring to, i'll post my remark (question) here;
the text states:
"HTML5 browsers (Mobile Safari, Android) can use an application cache to both reduce page startup time and to enable offline features."
but to my knowledge the android browser does not support html5 offline functionality, relying on gears instead (i can confirm this to be the case on my htc hero)?
I would expect Google, being a highly visible proponent of html5, to at least have a native html5 implementation of appcache and localdb on the android-browser roadmap, maybe for éclair?
i'll post my remark (question) here;
Use a conventional mobile URL, and advertise it.
No accepted standard exists for providing an address to a mobile version of a desktop service, but there are some recognized conventions: m.yoursite.com, mobile.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/mobile. Choose a simple mobile URL and publish it on your desktop site.
Are you crazy?
Thats why .mobi was created, for mobile content.
@Nigel:
1. Very few people have heard of .mobi. Now I appreciate that it is created for this purpose and that the only way they will get to hear of it is to use it but...
2. Depending on your domain, you may not be able to register a .mobi version so what do you do then? And...
3. it may be too late as the likes of MySpace and Google already use the m.domain option.
@James:
1) How do you know how many people have heard of .mobi?
Have you heard of .mobi?
Have you asked people if they know about .mobi? Well then by asking them if they know what .mobi is, then now they have heard of it!
How many people watch Fox News? A few million maybe? I guess all those people didn't see the FoxNews.mobi logo?
Maybe all the people reading The Sun in the UK didn't notice TheSun.mobi promotions either? http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/
2) There are 1 million .mobi domains registered and 80 million .com domains registered!
Can you do math? That's 79 million websites that are able to register their .mobi domain name!
3) Google owns and 'uses' their Google.mobi domain name. They are also supposedly a backer of dotMobi. Yet for some (underground, secret society, conspiracy theory) reason, they choose not to promote it.
MySpace also own their MySpace.mobi domain and can start using it whenever they are ready (if ever)!
4) What about all the people that don't have a desktop website and want a mobile presence?
What about all the people that cannot get the .com domain they want because the owner wants $1,000,000+?
Again - 80,000,000 .com (vastly non mobile-friendly) domains registered vs. 1,000,000 .mobi
Why would someone want just a mobile presence? Well look at how many "start-ups" have built iPhone apps! With an ever-advancing mobile web it's not too hard to image that a lot of those iPhone apps can be just regular mobile sites!
Damn, I want to buy m.games.com to build a new mobile games site but the owner wont sell the sub-domain! :(
Looking at Google's mobile site, there seems to be a way to go:
*Replace the XHMTL doctype with HTML 5's !doctype html and adjust content-type appropriately, including removing the space after the semicolon
*Remove the unnecessary head tags
*Replace " />" on the ends of tags with ">
*Remove http: from links and image src (it's implied)
*Remove the type attribute, spaces and unnecessary terminating ; from CSS style definitions
These changes alone saved 161 gzipped bytes (down to 1,493 bytes). With a little more effort and cutting (do you really need terms? Privacy? That huge analytics link?) you might get it into 1,460 bytes with packet overhead, which is the MSS for many networks. Google in a single packet!
Obviously you should test these changes so they do not cause problems on particular mobile devices.
@FutureMobile
Oh dear, I was afraid of this.
You don't have to do any kind of survey to know that more people have heard of .com than .mobi. I'll go as far to say that here in the UK more people have heard of .co.uk than .mobi
As a web developer it makes sense to use a domian people will find easy to remember. Humans remember things easier (as a general rule) if it is familiar to them in some way.
But because you won't be happy with that, I asked approximately 40 people consisting of friends, family and work colleagues and only 2 of them had heard of .mobi. More people thought it was some reference to the old CarPhoneWarehouse adverts.
Sun readers probably aren't the best example to use. Probably on par with people that watch Fox (Feux) News.
My point still stands that some major players are promoting and USING m.domain over their registered .mobi and that will make it harder to get it to become the mainstream.
My comments were generalised but accurate. Please don't start a pedantic argument.
I think the Google Search facility for mobile has improved significantly, and I'm talking about a standard device from Nokia with a small colour screen. Just one question, how come the SERP's don't give preference to the websites that have been optimised for mobile? (i.e. The superbly-adapted CNN site).
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.
Thanks and take care,
The Webmaster Central Team
Post a Comment