This article struck me as particularly misleading for those seeking genuine advice on mobile strategy and creating a future friendly mobile web presence. After some interesting discussion around this on Twitter it’s become apparent that there are many mixed messages out there leading to a significant misunderstanding of mobile web on design, usabilty and delivery to multiple devices.

It is only possible to adopt the  methodology of “one site fits all” if you are using a technology platform that optimises the content to each device at a granular level. If you don’t use such technology and decide to approach mobile web with only an understanding of web practices then you would disregard a decade of experience and development held by mobile web specialists. Additionally you could very well be making some critical errors in mobile design, user-experience, device rendering & marketing such as those made by American Airlines (placing QR codes in their in-flight magazine) or I Cant Believe it’s Not Butter (series of iPhone ads linking to a non-mobile optimised site).  Specialists ensure successful implementation of mobile friendly content suited to all, rather than just a small screen desktop or a discriminatory experience that discounts a large percentage of your consumers.

Over the coming few weeks I aim to talk in greater depth around these issues dispelling some of these myths and clarifying what a mobile web specialist can offer over and above a web agency and would welcome your thoughts, feedback and questions on this topic.

Coming Next: Demystifying Mobile Web Development | Design and Usability

We’ve created a fantastic 10 Session Webinar Training Program to aid you in becoming a master mobile web design expert and we’re including an additional 11th session focusing on mobile marketing.

This webinar-based Program starts November 1st and is absolutely FREE and we’re offering it exclusively to registered Wapple users. (not registered yet…click here quick!)

During the course you will learn how to build a mobile site yourself using our fictitous car services site ‘K-Ching’ as the focal point whilst learning some of the exciting key design, marketing & technical features of our intelligent Mobile Publishing Platform.

Once registered you’ll be able to download the Training Pack which will include the Program Schedule, the K-Ching Mobile Site content (graphics, csvs ) and all relevant training preperation.

Be quick though, places are limited and registration closes THIS Friday 28th October.

Register Now for the K-Ching Training Webinar! (or sign up with Wapple first)

We have previously commented about the death of Symbian-http://blog.wapple.net/the-death-of-symbian-is-another-new-and-exciting-start-for-nokia/ may,ironically, give a boost to Nokia’s future, but is the spike in the company’s share price a blip or a sea-change in the handset behemoth’s fortunes?

Nokia certainly seems to think it’s good news for the company and rushed out a statement that ‘opportunities for the growth of Nokia’s smartphone business will be greatest with the Windows Phone”. We agree with them, because Windows Mobile 7 is a great platform.

Naturally there are all types of theories about patents with some going as far to say that Google’s deal makes Nokia more attractive as an acquistion for Microsoft. But Microsoft has patents of its own and that makes Nokia’s acquisition less attractive. But, enough already of acquisitions, let’s hear it for the operating systems, may the best one win (the greatest market share).

For anyone wanting to display a listing of their products, be it either a one off list, or a list of categories, or a list of items inside a category – it’s all now possible.

You’ve got a load of options to play with:- display thumbnails next to product titles; upload separate thumbnails for each category; options for pagination and of course as with everything in Wapple Canvas, it’s fully multi-lingual.

Right now the shop chunk allows you to show your products, but we have plans for adding checkouts and to integrate with mobile payment providers such as PayPal mobile express checkout. When we add these, we’ll make sure we let you know.

We’ve already used the shop chunk to display product listings on a number of sites – it’s great for showing information and allowing your consumers to browse through items.

Get in touch and let us know what you think of our new feature or if you’ve tried it and have a suggestion to improve it!

One option is to design it with CSS – add a border here, a background there, and you’ll get something that looks a little bit like a button. Take advantage of some CSS3 features such as border-radius and maybe a gradient background and you can come up with something really nice.

But what happens on phones that don’t handle CSS3 (or CSS in general) that well? You’ll get a rubbish looking button, that’s what !!

Another option with CSS, is to create an image, and reference it with via a background CSS property. But you’ll have the same issue as above – some phones will display it ok, but some won’t.

So to try and help with this, we’ve added a new form item – Image submit. You’ve had image submit buttons in HTML for ages and now we’ve added this feature to both Canvas and Architect.

In Canvas, you simply create a new form item of type “Image Submit Button”, and assign it a graphic you’ve already uploaded. No relying on CSS and if a handset can’t handle it, we’ve got a fallback in place.

In Architect, create a <formItem> element, and specify a “graphic_src” element – the system will use this URL as the basis of the image. If you don’t want it to scale, set the graphic_scale to 0 – check out our formItem documentation for a more in depth analysis.

Let us know if this new feature helps you out and send through the URL of your site so we can take a look at your new submit buttons!

So if someone hits your site but ends up on a URL they shouldn’t, you can now create a handy 404 page that might have links to your sitemap (or even a Sitemap chunk on it), a link to the home page, or anything you want.

You can edit your 404 page exactly the same way as you do any other page on your site – create some text, drop a graphic or two on it and you’re done.

If you want some inspiration for cool looking 404 pages, check out this link: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/60-really-cool-and-creative-error-404-pages/ – there are some great 404 pages on there and if you create something similar, let us know and we’ll publish some of the best!

If you want to split a text chunk over a number of pages, just include [/pagebreak] in the body of your text and pagination links will split the text over multiple pages. Simples.

You can even control the text of the pagination links in the labels page of Canvas.

Just zip up your graphics and upload that file where you would normally upload an image file. Once uploaded, the zip file will be unpacked and each image will become its own site graphic. Whatever rules you set at upload will be applied to each site graphic, but be sure to either remove or replace the new site graphic name. Whatever is in this box will prefix the filename of the source graphic when the site graphic is added

They allow you to tailor chunks of functionality so they only appear on specific versions of a particular mobile operating system – and up to now, we only enabled it for the BlackBerry OS.

We promised that there would be more, and indeed there are! We have added the following operating system rules:

• Android
• iPhone OS
• Web OS
• Windows Mobile
• Symbian

In addition, we’ve added a dynamic rule to test for the vendor name, so if you wanted, you could target a campaign at all Samsung phones.

Couple these with our impressive super rules, and you can target a Samsung phone, on Android, running Froyo!

Dynamic rules are Canvas only right now, but they will be coming to WAPL in the very near future – we’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Well all these problems and more have been solved with the latest chunk to be added to Wapple Canvas.

It’s called the Bing Search Near Me chunk and is an integration with a number of technologies from those clever folk at Bing. It allows you to search for locations near to you – pizzas, restaurants, golf clubs, fitness centers – they’re all there ready to be searched for.

Lots of Bing

First of all, it integrates with the Bing Maps Search Service, which allows you to enter a location and keyword – and return relevant results. Tie it in with GPS lookups on a mobile phone browser and you’ve got something that will find you stuff right where you are!

We’ve also integrated the chunk with Bing Maps, so not only can you find locations near you, but you can see where they are on a map – very useful if you’re not too familiar with an area.

And finally we’ve used the Bing Maps Direction Service, so after seeing your nearby spots on a nice looking map, you get handy directions that show you exactly how to get there and how long it’ll take!

Some practical uses

If you want any kind of search on your site to find businesses, or shops, or restaurants or whatever, this is the chunk for you. It’s massively configurable, so if you want to allow your users the ability to click the link to phone the shop direct, or change walking to driving directions, you can.

It also has a setting for overriding the mode it starts in – so if you have an event and want to show the nearest 3 Sushi restaurants to your party in downtown Manhattan, set the mode override, specify the where and the what and let the chunk do the rest!

To demonstrate just how useful this chunk is – we had a guy at Wapple HQ needing to find a tyre in a hurry. He used the Bing Search Near Me chunk to find a tyre shop nearby, used the click to call functionality to check if they had one in stock, and followed the directions and map to get there to have his tyre fitted!

It’s all available in one chunk inside of Canvas – so log on and add a Bing Search Near Me chunk to your page to get your users looking for locations near them!

If you’ve got some ideas for using the chunk and would like to talk them through with us, drop us a line.