Mobile Web Junkie

Transcoding web pages into mobile web pages does not work.

There’s an ongoing debate on the subject of mobile web transcoding, so here’s our take.

Let’s be clear on our language here though. Transcoding videos for mobiles is essential and very good, but doing it to your web output is bad. Really bad.

A reliance on an automated process that takes HTML output and reformats it to mobile markup is a deluded one. Computers are really bad at recognising diverse visual patterns (that’s why we all use CAPTCHA to protect from bots) and you don’t get much more diverse than web design. If a transcoder has been taught your web layout, you’ll find yourself tied to that web design or face losing any learning invested in the system.

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IE6 Must Die is a trending topic on Twitter right now. The world is demanding that IE6 support is dropped, effectively forcing the hand of anyone still using the browser and hopefully freeing the internet from the hell that is substandard browser support.

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The mobile web is a great place for advertising, content, information, social experiences and fulfillment on the go. In fact, what better than the opportunity to connect with users through the device they carry around with them at all times?

Trouble is, developing for mobile browsers is hard if you don’t choose the right tools and technology to help you on the way.

If you’ve ever tried to code for the mobile web in the past (or have been lucky enough to have someone do it for you), you’ll know how hard it’s been to create a mobile site that looks great and provides a great user experience on all mobile devices.

Mobile web development is traditionally very difficult. You are not alone. In this article, I hope to explore some of the troubles encountered and then a really cool mobile publishing solution that will help you develop mobile web sites – your mobile web sites, the way you want them. I’ll also explain how you can do it quickly.

The results will optimize for EVERY mobile browser, perfectly.

Instead of having to worry about a couple of browsers as you would with a desktop browser, you’ve got different screen sizes, firmware, operators, carriers and multiple markup languages to look after – all of which meaning there’s a potential 50,000 devices to support.

That’s a staggering number. If you ever had the problem of making something work in IE6 then multiply that headache by the figure above. It’s brain-splitting to say the least.

There have been tools emerge in the past that have gone some way to helping, but now there is a new service available that has removed all of the problems and barriers to development. It’s called Wapple Architect and by the end of this article you’ll know all about it and how it’s revolutionized the entire web world.

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Following hot on the heels of my article about How I Mobilized WordPress, I’m pleased to report that version 1.0 of my mobile plugin is now available on wordpress.org!

If you want to get it for yourself, head over to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wapple-architect/, have a read of the documentation and activate it on your own blog!

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So you’ve got your WordPress site running, you’ve installed a load of plugins to do fancy things and there’s a large subscriber base following your every post. However, without realising it, you’re giving a poor user experience to anyone reading your blog on their mobile phone. Have a read of “Why Millions of WordPress Bloggers Need to get Mobile Friendly” to see why this is such a big problem.

To help the community at large, I’ve created a WordPress mobile plugin and theme that provides a perfect WordPress experience to mobile web users and here’s how and why I did it.
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Fact: People are accessing your website URL on their mobile phone!

The latest stats suggest that 5% of traffic to websites now get hit by mobile browsers, even if you promote a separate URL for mobile web.

What do you want them to see? The actual website that takes 20 minutes to load and scrolls to about 10 times the width and height of the mobile? Not likely. They’ll want to see a mobile specific version, running off that single domain, perfectly optimized to whichever handset they’re using, yes, even if they have an iPhone. Read more

Last week something exciting happened inside the colourful walls of Wapple – the latest version of the mobile site was launched. Below are the obligatory before and after screenshots and at first glance you’ll probably notice that they look pretty similar. However, all is not as it seems because underneath the bonnet – everything has changed.

Built with Canvas

Built with Architect

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