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

While Nielsen’s focus groups are small, the message is plain. He says mobile web design has a long way to go and 100% customer satisfaction won’t come for another 15 years. That’s where we disagree with him. We can create rich mobile web experiences using tools that are strong on design and tailor-made for the platform; usability experience will come sooner than 2026.

Our clients and brands are demanding more from us as mobile web design evolves and we deliver quality for them. We are making a difference and one day we might even improve the frankly unweildy design of a certain website created by Jakob Neilsen.

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!

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.

Store locators, POI locators, Location Lookups – call them what you want – we’ve integrated them into Canvas so you can have location based services built into your mobile site.

The system is two fold.

Geo caching

First up, you create your locations (either manually or with a CSV file) – you don’t need to know exactly where they are either, a zip or postcode will do. We’ll then use geocaching techniques to work the rest out including an exact latitude and longitude. We use a mixture of Bing, Google, Yahoo and Multimap for that but it’s configurable, so if you find your locations in your area are more accurate with Bing, then use Bing.

Location Lookup Chunk & Maps

Once that’s done – place a Location Lookup chunk on a page, specify which location group to grab data from and you’re done!

You get a whole raft of options with the chunk, ranging from which map provider you want to use (Google Maps so far – but more to come), to the colour of the marker/pushpin you want to use to show locations.

We’ve also employed some new techniques and technology with this chunk -  if you have a handset with a browser that supports GPS capabilities, the chunk can automatically find your location. Particularly handy if you don’t know where you are and need to find a coffee shop in a hurry!

Also, if you have an iPhone, you can click on the map and it’ll automatically open up Google Maps, again very useful if you want to pan and zoom. Of course if you don’t have an iPhone, you’ll still get a great looking map with all the locations mapped on it.

Store locators are the obvious and probably the most widely used application for this functionality, but you don’t have to restrict yourself to just that – surf spots and locations of music events are two others that spring immediately to mind. You could get really creative and track vehicles/people, and then allow visitors to your mobile site the ability to find them. Who knows, you could even create some sort of city based spy game with it!

If you’ve already created a store locator or any kind of location based service – or would like more information about how to get started, get in touch, we’d be only too glad to talk to you about it.

Upload a source graphic, create a Graphic Wallpaper chunk on your page, and configure it how you want – your users will be able to view and download a perfectly sized wallpaper to their handset. And that’s every handset with any screensize!

Head over to Wapple Canvas, log in, and start uploading your wallpapers to check it out!

You’ll need an Amobee account, so for more information about Amobee and to sign up, check out http://www.amobee.com/main/hp.htm