Adactio: Links

In San Francisco, a house with its own Twitter feed in MIT Technology Review

A profile of Tom’s house.

It’s weird how normal this is.

The $12 Gongkai Phone

A fascinating analysis of a super-cheap phone from another world.

Welcome to the Galapagos of Chinese “open” source. I call it “gongkai” (公开). Gongkai is the transliteration of “open” as applied to “open source”. I feel it deserves a term of its own, as the phenomenon has grown beyond the so-called “shanzhai” (山寨) and is becoming a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem of its own.

Just as the Galapagos Islands is a unique biological ecosystem evolved in the absence of continental species, gongkai is a unique innovation ecosystem evolved with little western influence, thanks to political, language, and cultural isolation.

Ghostlab

This looks like it could be a handy app for synchronising a whole bunch of devices when testing. I’ll have to give it a whirl on the device lab.

Also, it has a perfectly fair one-off price, rather than the Mafia-style protection fee model that Adobe uses for Edge Inspect.

Content Parity on the web

A couple of years ago, the benefits of separate sites were more clear to me. Today, I can’t think of a good reason to maintain a separate mobile site.

Reorganization by Trent Walton

Trent hammers home the point that the kind of compartmentalisation that’s traditionally been part and parcel of the web dev workflow just won’t cut it anymore.

Brett Jankord – Active development on Categorizr has come to an end

I think it’s a bit of a shame that Brett is canning his mobile-first device-detection library, but I totally understand (and agree with) his reasons.

There is a consensual hallucination in the market, that we can silo devices into set categories like mobile, tablet, and desktop, yet the reality is drawing these lines in the sand is not an easy task.

Antiphonal Geometry · Harmony and proportion in responsive web design

This is the full text of Owen’s talk at the Responsive Day Out. It makes for a terrific read!

Antwerp Open Device Lab

Do you know anyone in Antwerp who wants to be part of a communal open device lab? Point them here.

Playing with game console browsers

The slides from Anna’s terrific talk at the Responsive Day Out.

Device lab

These device holders/stands look really nice, and they’d be a real help keeping my spaghetti cables in check.

Izilla Open Device Lab, Newcastle, NSW - Open for Testing!

I believe this may be Australia’s first open device lab. I hope it’s the first of many.

Designing with context : Cennydd Bowles

A great meaty piece from Cennydd, diving deep into the tricky question of context.

The guys at Cover Up are great: they make accessories for tablets and e-readers, so they have lots of those devices. They’ve made them all available for web developers to test on. Like I said: they’re great!

» 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?

Fragmented world: what two years of traffic data teaches you about mobile | Info | guardian.co.uk

A great breakdown of mobile traffic to The Guardian website over time.

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.

Remote Preview

This looks like it could be one alternative to Adobe Shadow or Edge Inspect or whatever they’re calling it now that they’re charging $120 a year for using it.

Device Fatigue | Brad Frost Web

I know how Brad feels. I find it hard to muster any enthusiasm for any specific new device these days. But that’s okay. It’s more important to step back and see the trends and directions instead of getting caught up in the specifics of this particular phone or that particular tablet.

My remedy for device fatigue has been to take a step back and let my eyes go unfocused. Much like a Magic Eye, I can then see the hidden pictures behind the stippled noise that is the device landscape. This remedy helps me cope, gets me to stop caring about things that don’t really matter, and gets me to care about the broader trends the Magic Eye unveils.

New Rule: Every Desktop Design Has To Go Finger-Friendly (Global Moxie)

Josh takes an-depth look at the navigation design implications of touch/keyboard hybrid devices, coming to a similar conclusion as Luke and Jason:

Unfortunately, the top-of-screen navigation and menus of traditional desktop layouts are outright hostile to hybrid ergonomics. Tried-and-true desktop conventions have to change to make room for fingers and thumbs.

Want to test for a hybrid device? Tough luck. Instead, argues Josh, the best you can do is assume that any device visiting your site could be touch-enabled.

Building a device stand

Pictures and plans for building a plywood stand for your device lab. I definitely want one of these for the Clearleft office.

Designing for different devices | Government Digital Service

A behind-the-scenes look at how Gov.uk is handling mobile devices. Spoiler: it’s responsive.

I found this particularly interesting:

When considering the extra requirements users of different devices have we found a lot in common with work already done on accessibility.

LukeW | Responsive Navigation: Optimizing for Touch Across Devices

Luke and Jason have done some excellent research (and put together some demos) into how the placement of navigation could be optimised for touch screens of all sizes. Turns out that the “standard” convention of having navigation along the top is far from ideal on a touch-enabled device.

Building the Happy Cog Test Lab - Cognition: The blog of web design

Ryan describes the research and process behind putting together a device lab for Happy Cog in Austin. Good stuff, with handy links gathered together at the end.

Game Console Browsers

This is an excellent resource from Anna. She’s documenting the browser capabilities of games consoles.

Device Lab / Oktavilla

A communal device lab in Stockholm.

Don’t confuse design testing with device testing — Stuff

Andy makes a good point here, point out the difference between device testing and design testing:

When I’m designing, it’s incredibly important for me to quickly gain an affinity with how my design feels when I hold it in my hands.

These are not device testing issues, they are design questions and there’s a huge difference between how an interface feels to use on a smartphone size display and whether the HTML, CSS and Javascript actually works on any particular make or model.

Establishing An Open Device Lab | Smashing Mobile

A great article that looks at everything you need to know to set up a communal device lab in your town.

Device Lab DC | A (coming soon!) community mobile device testing lab in Washington, DC

There’s an open device lab starting up in Washington DC. If you’re in the area, get in touch and share your devices.

Scott Jenson | Exploring the world beyond mobile

Excellent! Scott has his own URL now. If you haven’t read everything he has written so far, start from the start and read every single post.

Lab Up!

This looks like a great idea: a centralised place for listing open device labs (and hopefully getting some sponsorship from device manufacturers).

CSSquirrel : Game Break | opinions and news on web design by Kyle Weems

Hey look; Anna’s in a CSSquirrel comic! And for good reason: Kyle is as impressed as I am with Anna’s research into browsers on gaming devices.

There’s also a call for more community device labs. I approve.

Community Device Labs - Google Groups

Jason has set up a mailing list for open device labs. If you are running one, or thinking of setting one up, you should sign up to share ideas and knowledge.

Nomad Device Lab

There’s an open device lab in Cape Town now. Excellent!

klick-ass.com » Avoid the Tamagotchis – a list of Open Device Labs

A list of open device labs around the world (mostly Europe).

A List Apart: Articles: Testing Websites in Game Console Browsers

An excellent in-depth article from Anna on the many gaming devices out there that have both an internet connection and a web browser.

Helsinki Open Device Lab

Helsinki now has a communal device lab. It looks great!

Why the Little Printer is good – aka, someone on the internet is wrong, a response. |

Dan makes a very good point about Little Printer: it’s not the “printer” part that matters; it’s the “little”.

The 64 Digital Super dooper device testing station

There’s a communal testing lab just outside London and they’ve got a very nifty set-up for their devices.

Introducing our “Open Test Lab” for mobile device testing - Blog - 80beans

Now Amsterdam has a communal device lab.

A future friendly workflow | Opinion | .net magazine

Some more thoughts on how our workflow needs to adapt to the current ever-changing device landscape.

The Internet of Things - Readlists

Those articles about the “Internet of Things” I linked to? Here they are in handy Readlist form.

» Explaining the iOS and Android mobile browser usage disparity Cloud Four Blog

A really fascinating analysis by Jason into the apparent disparity in web browsing between Android and iOS devices: it turns out that the kind of network connection could be a big factor.

co.up’s new Open Device Lab - co.up

First we take Manhattan…

Berlin now has a communal device lab. Wunderbar!

CamHolder 0.2 for iPhone, Android and other mobile handsets - by Heiko Behrens

I’ve seen Heiko present with this gizmo at Mobilism and it worked a treat. I’m very tempted to get one for future presentations.

London Device Library

London now has its own device lab (at the Mozilla offices).

If you’re in London and you have an old phone you could contribute, please, please add it to the contribution.

We’ll tell you what you really want: Mobile context, top tasks, and organization-centric thinking | Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Content Strategist

An excellent follow-up to the recent posts on the myth of mobile context.

You often hear about cutting content to cut clutter. I support this—if you’re cutting the clutter from everywhere, not just a mobile experience.

Maybe the answer isn’t cutting. Maybe it’s learning better skills for designing and structuring complex information to be usable and enjoyable in small spaces.

Twitter Blog: Overhauling mobile.twitter.com from the ground up

A great behind-the-scenes look at the redesign (and redevelopment) of Twitter’s mobile subdomain silo. Man, I would love to see this progressively enhanced up to the current widescreen view for “desktop” browsers without the need for separate URLs for any class of device.

But I digress …this is good stuff.

Great Works of Fiction Presents: The Mobile Context | The Haystack.

A really great article from Stephen on how we are mistakenly making assumptions about what users want. He means it, man!

Anna Debenham: Using the Nintendo DSi browser

Anna reports on her experience testing on a device we don’t often think about: the Nintendo DS …very popular with the young ‘uns.

modl ∴ Malmö Open Device Lab

Now there’s a communal device testing lab in Malmö, Sweden too.

Setting up a mobile testing suite | words from Cole Henley, @cole007

If you’re based anywhere near Frome in Somerset, get in touch with Cole—he’s putting together a communal device testing lab.

Resizable Displays | Fluid Interfaces

See now, this is why liquid layouts are the way to go.

Deciding what Responsive Breakpoints to use | Tangled in Design

Another call for design-based (rather than device-based) breakpoints in responsive sites.

The Future Friendly Campus // Speaker Deck

It’s great to see the Future Friendly call-to-arms being expanded on. Here it’s university sites that are being looked at through a future-friendly lens.

Mobile Device Testing: The Gear | Bagcheck

An oldie but a goodie: this Bagcheck blog post contains a whole bunch of useful links to lists of mobile device testing suites.

Testing For Dummies | Testing

An in-depth look at the BBC News mobile testing process. I think it’s great that people are sharing this kind of information.

scottjehl/Device-Bugs

Scott has created a one-stop-shop for documenting browser bugs in mobile devices. Feel free to add to it.

Goldilocks and the Three Device Pixel Ratios [Legends of the Sun Pig - Martin Sutherland’s Blog]

A great examination of the default settings for pixel density and how it can effect reported device width values on mobile.

LukeW | Which One: Responsive Design, Device Experiences, or RESS?

Luke outlines three different solutions to delivering a site to multiple devices.

Ringmark

An acid test for mobile browsers. Point your device at rng.io and it will report on how much or little mobile shininess is available.

JoshEmerson.co.uk · Blog · The Responsive Process

Josh goes through the talking points from the recent Responsive Summit he attended. Sounds like it was a great get-together.

Responsive Design: Why You’re Doing It Wrong | Design Shack

A rallying cry for a content-focused—rather than device-focused—approach to responsive design. Despite the awful title and occasionally adversarial tone, this article is making a very good point about being future friendly.

Choosing device sizes to support for your responsive designs | Matt Wilcox .net

Another plea for content-out rather than canvas-in design.

A plea for progressive enhancement | Stephanie Rieger

Yes! Yes! Yes!!!

Progressive enhancement is the only sane approach to today’s massively divergent landscape of devices. It can’t be repeated often enough.

On designing content-out (a response to Zeldman and others) | Stephanie Rieger

Stephanie details all the things we have to know about when designing for today’s broad range of devices: performance, capabilities, form factor, pixel density, and network latency.

These are all good points but I worry that if we just concentrate on the current device landscape, our processes won’t adapt to the future.

The ‘trouble’ with Android | Stephanie Rieger

Stephanie focuses on Android but this is a cautionary tale about trying to impose control over what you’re sending to the multitude of mobile devices out there.

Designing to fixed screen sizes is in fact never a good idea…there is just too much variation, even amongst ‘popular’ devices.

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.

imity

This is really cool: a real-time map of bluetooth devices currently at the Reboot conference.

Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly in Two Minutes

Mike has a really nice stopgap technique for improving your site on mobile devices.

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