Designing with context : Cennydd Bowles
A great meaty piece from Cennydd, diving deep into the tricky question of context.
Tags: desktop
» Responsive Design for Apps — Part 1 Cloud Four Blog
A great piece by Jason analysing the ever-blurring lines between device classes.
Mind you, there is one question he doesn’t answer which would help clear up his framing of the situation. That question is:
What’s a web app?
Mobile first: the revolution is well under way - Generated Content by David Storey
David takes a look at worldwide trends in web browsing, pointing out where mobile traffic exceeds desktop …and we’re not necessarily talking about smartphones here either.
It would be possible to travel from the Niger Delta on the west coast of Africa, to the horn of Africa on the east coast, without passing through a country where people surf more on desktop than a mobile phone.
Distant Shape: 10 Years of Daring Fireball
A nice visualisation of Apple’s transition From desktop to mobile over ten years, one Daring Fireball article at a time.
Oh, and happy birthday, Daring Fireball.
Twitter without Hashbangs
Remember when I linked to the story of Twitter’s recent redesign of their mobile site and I said it would be great to see it progressively enhanced up to the desktop version? Well, here’s a case study that does just that.
Satellite Eyes
A nifty little Mac app from Tom: it changes your desktop wallpaper to a satellite view of your current location.
Alas, it requires Lion, an operating system I’ve been trying to avoid installing.
LukeW | Why Separate Mobile & Desktop Web Pages?
Luke enumerates the reasons why Bag Check has a separate desktop website rather than one responsive URL for desktop and mobile. They’re good reasons but I think they could all be addressed with some clever conditional loading, especially seeing as the site was, of course, built mobile first.
It’s About People, Not Devices | UX Booth
An excellent article from Bryan, hammering home the point that there is no sharp dividing line between desktop and mobile.
Remember as well that the most ubiquitous of technologies, the common thread throughout many connected devices, is the browser. Browser-based experiences may not always be as sexy, but they are often far more capable of adapting to different contexts. In times of rapid change, adaptability—rather than features—may be your product’s greatest ally.
There is no Mobile Web | The Haystack.
Steven nails exactly why I’m so excited about the increasing diversity of devices accessing the web; not so that we can build more silos, but so that we can sure our content is robust enough for the multitude of different devices:
To be honest, I can think of a few, but not many use cases of web sites or apps which are or should be exclusively mobile. It seems like the Mobile Web allows us to revisit all of the talk of inclusion, progressive enhancement and accessibility from years ago.
Google Quick Search Box
A Quicksilver rival from Google.