On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 7:06 AM, Vishal Iyer <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm designing a content website for the iPhone and was asked to investigate > on how the design should translate to the WAP (i.e other internet enabled > devices) version. I've lately seen a trend (not entirely sure though, my > first reaction was WAP is still around?) where the WAP version is pretty > much a downgraded iPhone experience- stripping off the iPhone specific > elements. Does this path work or does the WAP version need a completely > different set of considerations?
First, you'll want to verify whether they are really wanting a "WAP" site, or if they actually want an "HTTP" site. That's a pretty snarky question, so instead ask them whether they mean WML, the markup language associated with WAP, or XHTML Basic/Mobile Profile. This question is a bit better because 98% of mobile phones are using XHTML these days ... but in some markets WML is still important. Use XHTML Basic unless you really need to go WML. I've not designed a WML page for 7 years, so you probably won't need to either. There are exceptions. Next you need to decide your strategy. How are you going to decide which device goes where? How many versions are you going to make? Are you going to make separate versions for devices with touch screens (finger friendly), or layer on a touch.css? Or make scroll-and-select users lose half their screen real estate? How are you going to handle screen sizes? 128x128 is not the same as 320x480, nor as 800x600. Oh, and are you going to allow Palm Pre and Android users to your iPhone site? What about Symbian? They all have WebKit, though different versions. Actually, add-on browsers Iris and Bolt are Webkit too. Some don't have touch screens. You can go with a least-common-denominator design, though even that won't be LCD. Follow mobileOK best practices. Or decide to ignore very-low-end phones (but careful! Windows Mobile 6 and earlier has a truly terrible browser, as do most Blackberries), and have a mid-range phone. Then you need to decide how to communicate support to end users. In addition to the mobile design wiki up at http://design4mobile.mobi, also check out http://mobiforge.com/designing ~~~~~ Barbara Ballard Skype: barbara_ballard Twitter, Delicious: barbaraballard email: [email protected] 1.785.838.3003 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
