Mobilizing Web Sites: Strategies for Mobile Web Implementation

by Kristofer Layon

Overview

Everyone has been talking about the mobile web in recent years, and more of us are browsing the web on smartphones and similar devices than ever before. But most of what we are viewing has not yet been updated for mobile presentation. How can designers bring more of the web up to speed with the capabilities of today's mobile devices?

In Mobilizing Web Sites: Develop and Design, author and designer Kristofer Layon addresses that elephant in the room --the many existing web sites that we manage on a day-to-day basis-- and walks through techniques that web designers can use to make these legacy web sites better-suited for mobile viewing. By focusing on content strategy and the mobile UI experience, web designers can use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to design mobile presentations of legacy, standards-based web sites. The techniques of gradual mobile improvement are all that a designer needs to help the existing web be more mobile.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780321793812
Publisher:	Peachpit Press
Publication date:	12/27/2011
Series:	Develop and Design
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Kristofer Layon is a designer, design educator, and product manager who lives in Minneapolis, MN. He currently focuses on mobile design for the web, and user experience and product design for iOS and Android applications.

Kris has been a graphic designer since 1993 and a web designer since 1996. Since then he has designed web sites for engineers, urban planners, city governments, artists, musicians, retailers, the National Park Service, and over thirty higher education clients. In addition to designing web sites, Kris has taught graphic design and typography in the University of Minnesota’s College of Design, where he was also an academic advisor for two years. Kris was also the founding director of MinneWebCon, Minnesota’s Web Conference, from 2008-2011.

Kris has a Master of Fine Arts degree in interactive design and a bachelor of arts degree in German and pre-architecture. He is a member of AIGA – the Professional Association for Design, the HighEdWeb Association, Design Research Society, and Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association. His work has won design awards from the AIGA and the Society of Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), and his early adoption of web video was featured on Apple’s web site in 1999.

Table of Contents

1. The irony of the mobile web Today's device capabilities, yesterday's web sites
2. Big fingers and busy schedules The mobile user experience
3. What is all of this, anyway? How to inventory your existing site content
4. Excuse me but what are you? How media queries help content fit mobile devices
5. Lean and tall Making large-screen layouts adapt to small screens
6. Now you see it, now you don't Analyzing and prioritizing content for mobile delivery
7. Buttons Coding, sizing, and styling the basic mobile UI element
8. Images Techniques for dealing with legacy images
9. Let's polka Accordion menus can save bulky legacy site navigations
10. Tell it like it is Mobile presentation tips for legacy blogs
11. iPhone and iPod touch considerations If you really want to customize for iOS, there are techiques for that
12. Mobile JavaScript libraries Sencha Touch and jQuery Mobile

Editorial Reviews

"This book reads like a perfectly structured day-long workshop. I like the practicality and humanity in it. Kris isn't a purist or an evangelist. He looks at the continuum of mobile presentation issues, ask you where you are on the continuum, and addresses your there. So don't be daunted by mobile, or wait to design for mobile until you can achieve perfection. Mobile is a journey. Use this book to plot your course." - Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards

"Baby steps. Kris's book is filled with them--little but powerful things you can do today to adapt your current site to the changing web and the growing importance of mobile devices. Like real baby steps, they'll open your eyes to new opportunities and ways of seeing the web." - Luke Wroblewski, author, Mobile First

From the Publisher