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)

Consequently, it was no surprise to see the company last week launch ‘Google Sites Mobile Landing Pages’, aka Google Mobilize, a new tool to help SMEs launch mobile websites. While this initiative provides simple, template-based sites and not a viable and integrated tool like Wapple Canvas for companies who need to ensure their brands are completely mobile-optimised, it is still big news for the sector.

Google Mobilize is free for SMEs to use, although this is not a philanthropic gesture on behalf of the company. This is all about mobile advertising revenue with SMEs signing up for the AdWords platform. Even so, it sends out an important message and will perpetuate the adoption of mobile web into every business’s marketing strategy.

The fact that Google are amplifying the words of Wapple and other pioneering mobile web technologies can only be a good thing!

Well, I care deeply and I imagine you do too. I care for EVERY mobile OS and ALL the many thousands of mobile devices that run on them and therefore I was compelled to read.  To my shock I discovered that the individual who asked the question does not care and dismisses a vast percentage of mobile web consumers in the US!

He is Jeff Williams, a UX lead at Marketing Drive and he publishes the fact that he and the company he represents don’t in fact know how to automatically optimize for ALL devices & browsers, yet they are building a mobile experience for the 4th largest retailer in US.

That retailer has, no doubt, invested heavily in their mobile strategy and trusted their mobile site with Jeff and friends at Marketing Drive but their mobile site is only going to run on Android and iOS because when Jeff realised he couldn’t make it work on the others his colleague said “Who cares”!

Wanted! For crimes against mobile OS

Oh dear!  Perhaps somebody might advise me who the fourth largest retailer in the US is so that I may inform them of current traffic stats in their region.

64% of US traffic to the many thousands of mobile sites and major brand ad campaigns on Wapple is generated by Android (34%) and iOS (30%) combined therefore 36%, I’ll repeat that, THIRTY SIX PERCENT is generated by all other operating systems that Jeff and his colleague don’t care about.

Admittedly, when I first read his article I was a little upset and may have suggested he was being lazy but let’s be clear here I don’t hate Jeff (who could), on reflection I can kind of see how he gave up trying.  He was attempting to create single versions of the site for each OS (let alone the thousands of variants he would have encountered trying to adapt to all the makes and models).  If he had built the site on Wapple technology he would have built just 1, I’ll repeat that too, JUST ONE SINGLE SITE and then applied simple conditions to it so only the smart phones got the cool features he was trying to implement.

Jeff, if you’re reading this, get in touch, it’s not too late to fix.

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

What it allows you to do, is create a group with a name, then place your campaigns into these groups.

We’ve got some fancy new reports coming soon that will display your campaigns grouped together in a really nice way – but for now, start creating your groups and place your campaigns into them.

You now have an option in Wapple Canvas, and an element in WAPL that allows you to specify a +, or 00, or whatever your international dialling prefix is. It’s labelled up as “International Prefix” in Canvas, and it’s <prefix> in WAPL Read about how to use it with your own scripts here, but for anyone using Canvas, log on and give it a try!

We now take advantage of mobile handsets browser capabilities – if they support transparent PNGs, and you’ve uploaded one, we deliver it. And we’ve increased the quality of images that are delivered too, so if you have a good quality PNG at around 1000px wide, you’ll get some stunning results on your mobile site.

Of course, our powerful device profiler Wapple Exhibit makes sure that your huge 1000px image is displayed perfectly to scale on any handset and if a particular phone doesn’t support transparencies or PNGs in general, you’ll get the fallback of a JPG (if the phone supports it!) with your choice of background colour. It also ensures that these higher quality images are still minimal in size and load quickly over mobile phone networks.

Get started by logging into Wapple Canvas and upload some new graphics. Overlay some transparent images on top of another background image if you want, the choice is yours!

If you’re using Architect, integrate your better quality Canvas images by using a <graphicChunk> element and reference your new image. More information on how to do this can be found on our documentation site at http://wapl.info/coding-for-the-mobile-web-with-WAPL/chapter/Graphic-Chunk/.

Let us know what you think of this new feature and whether if you’d like to see any other improvements with graphics.