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October 4, 2007
Mobile widget developer tips.
In my presentation Developing Mobile Widgets at Mobile Web Ameicas, I used these guidelines from Opera. Hope you find them useful. If you have any tips to add, I can include them here. Many thanks to the team at Opera for this!
GENERAL
- Keep the user interface simple
- Keep the technical solution simple
NETWORK
- Optimize client/server network communication
- Minimize amount of data transferred
- prefer JSON over XML
- Batch requests to the server, use HTTP pipelining
- Let the server return HTTP 304 when data has not been updated on
server
DOM AND DATASTRUCTURES
- Keep your DOM short, simple and shallow
- Store data in Javascript variables and create DOM elements only for
the current view.
- Avoid hiding large number of elements with CSS display: none;
instead remove the elements from the DOM and store data in
Javascript variables
PAGE LAYOUT
- Avoid reflows. Examples of things that may cause reflows:
- Change of class names
- Change of element dimensions and positions
- Insertions of elements into the DOM; insert completed
document fragments; don't add element by element
USEABILITY
- Follow the steps of user centered design:
- Understand the needs of your users
- Understand the environment where the widget will be used
- device characteristics
- context where the widget will be used, e.g. mobility, light,
attention
- Create scenarios and use-cases
- Wireframes, prototype and test
- Inputing data on mobile devices is generally difficult, let the user
make selections instead of typing
- Desktop services to be presented as mobile widgets must be
redesigned to work
- Use CSS style sheets to adapt the visual presentation of the widget
for devices with different characteristics
Posted by ajit at October 4, 2007 2:58 PM
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Comments
Hey there,
If you want to create mobile widgets easily, you can best use GLOWE.
The Global Language for Open Widget Environments is ment to be an open specification that everyone can use.
Very easy to create a first widget. :-)
check www.glowe.org
Posted by: Erdem at June 10, 2008 2:46 PM