I came across one of the best blog articles I have ever read: Lessons Learned while Building an iPhone Site Posted by Ross Harmes, posted on the Flickr blog. Having recently gone through an interesting effort developing the mobile site for Galen Partners, I totally was not only able to relate to his article but clearly appreciated his approach.
Ross clearly states the hardest part about developing mobile sites, and states this right up front in the first paragraph:
A lot of the current best practices get thrown out the window in the quest for minimum page weight and fastest load times over slow cellular connections.
From how you code to squeezing every little thing out of your code, to thinking out of the standard website box model he shares with us great insight.
Ross breaks his enlightenment down to 5 great advice points (plus a golden nugget of advice):
1. Don’t Use a JavaScript Library or CSS Framework
2. Load Page Fragments Instead of Full Pages
3. Don’t Build for Just One Device
4. Optimize Everything
5. Tell the User What’s is Happening
plus:”One Easy Option”
This article applies not just to iPhone but all mobile site design (application) development, and in-fact he clearly this out an encourages all mobile developers to design from a wide span of devices.
So pop on over to the Flickr blogg an give is a read:
http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/27/lessons-learned-while-building-an-iphone-site/
