Mobile Design and Development

Book excerpt: Mobile devices outnumber desktop and laptop computers three to one worldwide, yet little information is available for designing and developing mobile applications. Mobile Design and Development fills that void with practical guidelines, standards, techniques, and best practices for building mobile products from start to finish. With this book, you'll learn basic design and development principles for all mobile devices and platforms. You'll also explore the more advanced capabilities of the mobile web, including markup, advanced styling techniques, and mobile Ajax. If you're a web designer, web developer, information architect, product manager, usability professional, content publisher, or an entrepreneur new to the mobile web, Mobile Design and Development provides you with the knowledge you need to work with this rapidly developing technology. Mobile Design and Development will help you: Understand how the mobile ecosystem works, how it differs from other mediums, and how to design products for the mobile context Learn the pros and cons of building native applications sold through operators or app stores versus mobile websites or web apps Work with flows, prototypes, usability practices, and screen-size-independent visual designs Use and test cross-platform mobile web standards for older devices, as well as devices that may be available in the future Learn how to justify a mobile product by building it on a budget