SXSW 2012

Posted on February 6, 2012 by



I’m honored to be returning to SXSW Interactive to speak about my second book, Mobilizing Web Sites. My session is Tuesday March 13 at 3:30. I hope to see you there!

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Easing into mobile product management

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

One of my readers, Gary F., wrote the first review of my new book on Amazon and it’s a very nice review (thank you, Gary). In particular, he writes:

This book is not a “mobile first” book which is why I purchased it. I needed some direction on how to take our existing content and make it available in a format that will look good on a mobile device.

I hope other web designers out there find the same value that Gary is finding. But more importantly, I hope Gary and others realize that as they’re learning about how to adapt an existing web site for mobile presentation, they are, in fact, taking steps that will allow them to more knowledgeably and confidently approach new “mobile first” designs in the future. How so, you might wonder?

Continue reading →

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Mobile baby steps

Posted on January 8, 2012 by

On December 29, Jeffrey Zeldman started a great conversation about mobile web design. He noted some gnashing of teeth by Stephanie Rieger and Marc Drummond, who were lamenting the challenges in designing for the wide range of Android OS versions and devices that are out there, and how responsive design breakpoints are not a silver bullet design solution (and may even be “dead”).

Rieger and Drummond are not alone in picking apart the challenging nuances of designing for the mobile web. But as my response suggests, I fear that some designers who analyze and write about the mobile web may be unnecessarily scaring others away from trying anything at all in the mobile space. By making acceptable mobile design seem more and more complex, some people are likely to just throw their hands up and try nothing at all.

And the fact is, many designers and companies are not doing anything to optimize for mobile (I’ve seen statistics as high as 70% of the web being mobile-hostile). Whereas optimizing for just one mobile platform, iOS, means that you’re delivering mobile-friendly web content to over half of people who browse the web on-the-go.

Mobilizing Web SitesThis is the premise of my latest book: taking mobile baby steps is better then doing nothing at all*. Because let’s face it, making some navigation, layout, and text sizing changes that can get your web content to over half of all mobile web browsers is a pretty strong start to mastering mobile web optimization. Moreover, the techniques and examples in my book were all thoroughly tested on older versions of Android, too, meaning that giving these methods a try gets you well over the 50% mark and into the 60th and 70th percentiles.

Granted, 50-70% is not everyone. But it’s a solid start, and well above 0%. So take a progressive approach to mobile design. Start small, yet leap ahead by at least designing for iPhone and Android smartphones. And as you refine your design and content, add additional breakpoints in your media queries, and continue to learn other design and performance techniques, you can stretch that reach even further as your progressive enhancements continue to accumulate.

Don’t think you need to go from crawling to running in one giant step. Baby steps are just fine, and some of the most important ones you’ll ever make.

* – Luke Wroblewski elaborates on my idea of mobile baby steps in a most eloquent foreword to Mobilizing Web Sites.

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.net Magazine Article: Mobilise Your Website

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

.net magazine

It was a real honor to be asked by .net magazine to write an article about mobile design, my first for this UK publisher of web design and development news (and sponsor of the well-regarded .net awards). Thanks to Oliver Lindberg, editor, for coordination, patience, and feedback.

Article: Mobilise Your Website

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Web conference sites: which ones are mobile?

Posted on November 10, 2011 by

After hearing about mobile design at web conferences for the past several years, it might be easy to think that if you haven’t made your own site mobile-friendly yet, you must be way behind the curve.

Well think again. During the course of writing about mobile web design, I got curious about how many web conferences have taken their own advice to heart and have designed sites for mobile presentation. A quick non-scientific check of one dozen prominent web conferences yielded a surprising result: 50%.

Conferences with responsive designs or mobile sites include:

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Posted in Projects - Mobile | 2 Comments

Why Kindle Fire Will be Huge

Posted on September 29, 2011 by

The new Android-based Kindle Fire was announced by Amazon yesterday, and I predict it will be the biggest challenge to iPad in the tablet space yet. Here’s why.

Unlike other tablet options, Amazon’s entry is most like Apple’s. Simply put, Apple is in control of iPad hardware, software, and content. It’s this powerful combination that makes it such a high-quality and seamless user experience for customers. And we can see that Amazon is more like Apple in this regard than Motorola, Samsung, or anyone else making tablets because of their dominant market position with book, music, and video content. Combine that with their own hardware and the Android OS (which Amazon has a fair amount of freedom in tailoring to their preferences), and Kindle Fire offers the same hardware, software, and content trifecta as iPad at half the price.

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New Book

Posted on August 4, 2011 by

Well, I’m doing it again: writing a second book about mobile design! This time, it’s about mobile-optimizing web sites. Entitled Mobilizing Web Sites: Develop and Design, it will be part of an exciting new series on Peachpit Press.

The book will be based on a case study, a sample web site I’ve designed that uses a typical fixed-width grid. What are some ways to mobile-optimize such a web site? And despite loving the idea of “mobile first”, what about “mobile last”? Are web designers stuck in the past with a fixed-width layout until they redesign a site from scratch?

The answer is no; there are many options in between doing nothing and starting all over with a completely new design. This book is about how to get into mobile design with what you already have: a standard-based design that was always meant to be responsive, and intended to adapt to new opportunities as they arise.

Related: Mobilizing Web Sites

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