CategoryMobile

May 15, 2014 — In this article, Biran Krall, will look at how the need of a more involved design and implementation process, due to responsive design complexities, create opportunities to work together better. We have to kill the mentality that there is an assembly line of workers waiting for it to be their turn, and instead embrace more focused collaboration across the project’s entire team. Read more…

May 14, 2014 — A few days ago, we published an article on Picturefill 2.0, a perfect polyfill for responsive images. Today’s article complements Tim Wright’s article and explains exactly how we can use the upcoming <picture> element and srcset, with simple fallbacks for legacy browsers. There is no reason to wait for responsive images; we can actually have them very soon. Read more…

May 6, 2014 — John Holt Ripley was working on a website that required a number of icons. “I know how to handle this. I’ll use an @font-face icon set for high-resolution screens. It’ll be a single file, to reduce HTTP requests, and I’ll include just the icons that I need, to reduce file size.” he thought. Until he ran the page in the device lab. On some devices, a number of the icons weren’t showing. Yet on the same devices, others were, so clearly it wasn’t an @font-face issue. It must have been the underlying Unicode. Read more…

April 29, 2014 — With Responsive Web Design becoming a convenient strategy for device-agnostic design, we keep running into annoying technical issues that all those quirky mobile browsers are raising so very often. Inconsistent CSS/JavaScript support, mobile fragmentation and complicated nuances such as device pixels, viewports, zooming, pointer/click events and the 300ms delay. To make sense of it all, we created The Mobile Web Handbook. Read more…

April 24, 2014 — So, does Unity beat HTML5? No, nor is this post intended to answer that question. The purpose of this is to provide insight into what it’s like for an HTML5 developer who strongly sides with the DOM and CSS to get into Unity game development. When Martin Kool’s HTML5 game Numolition was nearly done, he decided to throw it all away and rebuild it in Unity. That turned out to be an exciting and valuable experience, and one that he thought would be worth sharing with other Web developers. Come in, the water’s warm! Read more…

April 22, 2014 — Users skip or otherwise ignore dialogs, tours, video demos and transparencies. At best, users find them a minor inconvenience. At worst, the patterns significantly aggravate new users who are trying to get into the app. In this article, Theresa Neil and Rick Malley will look at why many common tutorial patterns are ineffective and how you can leverage game design principles to increase user engagement. Read more…

April 9, 2014 — As mobile browsers continue to improve, offering new features and enhancing performance, new opportunities like this will arise. It’s always important to question whether you should build a native app or a Web app, and keep in mind the pros and cons of each, especially because the differences in their capabilities are narrowing rapidly. In this article, Nick Jonas and Francis Villanueva Will discuss a few of the biggest challenges here: detecting user activity, achieving performant animations, and building an API integrated with Google Analytics. Read more…

April 7, 2014 — A lot of mobile-minded talented folks often mention feeling isolated and not truly understanding what the client really needed. While involving clients in your mobile workflow can be challenging, really working together will make a big difference. In this article, Thomas Joos will share some important things he has learned about involving clients in his mobile workflow. Let’s dive into some tips and tricks that he uses every day. Read more…

March 19, 2014 — What is the ideal product page? Who are we building this mobile website for? Putting together a mobile e-commerce website is a multidisciplinary task that encompasses business management, design, development and marketing. In this article, Lawrence Howlett will walk through all of the vital steps when planning a highly converting mobile e-commerce website. Read more…

March 17, 2014 — With iOS 7’s new Dynamics API, views can be influenced by gravity, attached to each other with springs, and bounced up against boundaries and each other. We’re used to objects in games feeling real. To get this effect, game designers use a physics engine that treats the elements as bodies in a simulation and that uses Newton’s laws of motion to calculate how they move over time. In using the engine, designers specify an object’s bounciness, its density, the level of gravity, and how things are attached to each other. In iOS 7, Apple made that technology available to UIKit-based apps as well. Read more…