Building Usable Mobile Phone Web Pages
- Listed: April 17, 2011 11:35 am
Description
Now that mobile phones are so widely used, creating mobile phone web pages is a challenge for many developers. Taking the obvious problem of screen size, mobile phone web design that produces pages that can be easily read is extremely important. Since most of the limitations regarding location have been overcome due to faster CPU speeds, larger memories and improved radio communications, accessing online data is now well within the capabilities of many mobile phones.
Many people who access the Internet on their PC at home can now access these same pages from their PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), or their mobile phone while traveling between work and home. Designers should bear in mind that the information they display on a larger screen might not display all that well when scaled down to display on a smaller one.
Most of today’s web pages have been written and tested on the wide color monitors attached to desktop PC’s. Despite the fact that the modern mobile phone has seen great technological advances, their screens have remained fairly small, which places a limit on how much they can display. More thought is therefore required on how to design web pages for viewing on mobile phones.
Factors that should be considered in building mobile websites include: how much color information to use (16 bit or 32 bit), the slower input of text, the absence of a mouse thus slowing a users interaction, scrolling is only possible vertically, commands executed by soft keys, slower data transfer, limited storage for data and the cost of transferring data.
On top of this, mobile users prefer shorter URL’s which reduces typing. A long text link is preferred however, as it is easy to see and select on the screen. Keep any navigation selections lower down the screen and not on top. Stay away from too many different text sizes on one screen and keep the special properties such as italics and underlining to a minimum.
If using images on a page, keep them small. Although the phone can zoom, having a smaller image will reduce download time. Images can overpower a page on a portable device and can detract from the information that is required. Do not position large images at the top of the screen as it can be tiresome waiting for a large image to download before the important data can be viewed.
An examination of the design requirements for creating mobile phone web pages has been explored by this article, so here is a summary of these points. Being able to read text on a small screen is very important. Fonts, colors and text alignment should be given careful consideration. Take time to design the document order, and lastly, choose suitable images that can be displayed on a small screen.
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