Mobile Web Design

From Aimee and Michael of Mobix Creative
 
There are few free, ‘only mobile’ themes for Drupal and I have selected the actively maintained ones. The others do not have Drupal 7  (dev or released) version or no recent updates…
 
Theme name: Mobile (Actively Maintained) (for Drupal 7 as well)
Mobile is designed as a mobile-only HTML5 theme with a focus on clean, readable, usable display of content and accessibility of functions. You can use the base theme, use one of the included child themes, or make your own child theme.
http://drupal.org/project/mobile

Millions of smartphone users are searching the web with their mobile phones looking for your services. You need a mobile-friendly website to capture their attention and convert them from visitors into buyers. Many of you have business websites that look great on your desktop and laptop. How will you convert your large scale website with large amounts of information to work on the small screens found on mobile phones and tablets?

Like many companies, SeascapeWebDesign.com is working to build a solution that works well on both large and small screens. There are several options available. You can build a separate mobile-only website to attract mobile web users. Or you can build a responsive website that responds to the size of your mobile device and automatically resizes so that it looks good on both the small and large screens.

Katy of SeascapeWebDesign.com found some challenges involved in redesigning a large screen website to work on a small screen. Here are some of them:

1.    How to downsize large banners found in the homepage slideshow to work on smartphones?
2.    I have portfolio slideshow built with Lightbox with large screenshots and blurbs. How do I get this to look good on a small smartphone?
3.    What about background images?
4.    How to optimize navigation and content for mobile devices

This is a reminder that you are invited to join the Surrey Drupal Meetup on Nov. 8th, 2012 at 6:30pm at ABC Restaurant, 15373 Fraser Hwy, Surrey, BC Canada

We are excited to have Aimee Chung of Mobix Creative (mobix.ca) to speak on Designing and Building Mobile-Friendly Websites. Learn about best practices and principles of mobile website development. Understand the market for smartphone/tablet development and which ones to best focus on. Be aware of the different types of external factors that affect the user interface design decisions that you make. Look at different tools for emulating mobile websites, validating, and testing. Get some useful tips for building mobile-friendly websites for Drupal. We’ll also discuss about how best to develop a mobile site, whether standalone or an all-in-one responsive site. Katy will be giving a short demo on Using Adaptive Theme to Build Responsive Drupal Website.

Please RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal/events/85032732/

Event: Surrey Drupal Meetup
Date: November 8th at 6:30pm
Location: ABC Restaurant in Fleetwod area of Surrey, BC Canada.

We are excited to have Aimee Chung and Michael Whyte of Mobix Creative (mobix.ca) to speak on Designing and Building Mobile-Friendly Websites. We are also looking for web designers and developers to share about your mobile-friendly projects. How did you redesign an existing desktop website to be responsive? Or did you go with a separate mobile-only website? Contact Katy@seascapewebdesign.com if you are interested in doing a demo/lightning talk for our meetup.

Please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal/events/85032732/

After a brief hiatus, we are back publishing our monthly newsletter. Here at Seascape Web Design, we focus on designing and building websites that you manage. Is your website mobile-friendly? Reach millions of smartphone users with your new mobile-friendly website.

Top 5 Ways to Improve your Website and Make it Mobile-friendly
Surfing the web with mobile devices is no longer just a growing trend – it's a business reality. As tens of millions of smartphones are sold each month, experts predict that more than half of all Internet usage will come from phones and tablets in the next 18 months.

This means that mobile web users are not just a small part of your customer base, but possibly the biggest part of it. With that in mind, here are five ways to make your business website mobile-friendly:

1. Ask your web developer for a mobile-friendly website design. Designing for smaller layouts that are used in mobile devices is a special skill. Be sure to ask your web developer if he/she has experience in designing and building mobile-friendly websites. Ask to see samples of websites they have designed and built with mobile devices in mind.

Katy recently attended Freelance Camp 2012 where Aimee Chung (mobix.ca) gave a very interesting and information presentation on Introduction to Mobile Web Design and Best Practices. Here are Katy's notes from the session:
 
Why use mobile-friendly web design?

• there are over 6 billion mobile phone users
• 20% of those (1.2 billion) use phone to browse internet
• mobile web browsing is the next predominant Internet platform

What is a mobile-friendly website?

A mobile-friendly website is one that displays correctly on hand-held devices such as smartphones, iPhones, iPads, and tablets. It also has these features:

1. Loads fast – bloated sites cost more money to access
2. Easy to read – mobile phone screens are 1/5^th the size of desktop computers
3. Easy to navigate – menus have limited space on mobile devices
4. Minimal scrolling - not just vertically but also horizontally
5. Avoids using Flash – because Apple products do not support Flash

 
Did you know?
“When Google looks at how to decide which ads to feature in its Google AdWords program, it will consider how well a site is tailored for mobile devices, things like whether it works well for touch, is made for smaller screens, has shorter load times and avoids Flash.”  (Source: http://gigaom.com/2011/09/21/google-pushes-advertisers-to-optimize-sites-for-mobile/)

We are looking forward to our meetup this week on Nov. 10^th at 6:30 pm. Trent Stromkins of ImageXmedia.com will be presenting on Tips for Building a Responsive Website with Drupal. Examples include GetLaunchKit.com built with the Omega theme. Come at 6:30 pm to chat with others and the presentation starts at 7pm. You are welcome to order food and drinks, but it’s optional. A 15% gratuity is added to each bill since the ABC Restaurant does not charge us a fee to rent the meeting room. Wifi is not reliable so bring your Smart phone and tether your laptop to your phone if you must have Wifi :-)