Thoughts @

handheld style sheets and getting to zen

Russell Beattie wants a mobile CSS Zen Garden. Dave Shea has a lot on his plate, but I think we should support the effort and help to make it happen! In his latest posting on handheld stylesheets, Russell points out the latest (and greatest) Opera solutions for flexible CSS solutions to style sheets for various browser types.

I have to say I’m getting more and more convinced that this is the direction that the mobile web is going to go. No recoding markup, no “separate and always unequal” access to content, etc. Just include a different style sheet on your server and you can re-arrange your web-standard markup as you see fit.

Running through some of the more relevant and helpful posts on mobile web authoring, we turn to Authentic Boredom (the blog of fellow SxSW mobile panelists Cameron Moll and Brian Fling) and a 3-part series on Mobile Web Design. In a brilliantly written series, Cameron and Brian cover Part i: State of the Mobile Web, Part II: Methods to the Madness and finally Part III: Tips & Techniques. The third part of this article comes complete with a list of resources, not to be missed by those contemplating (or working on) mobile sites. In a discussion on media=”handheld” the article comments on some of the pros and conts of stylesheet usage:

By far, handheld stylesheets are regarded by many standards aficionados as the poster child of a more mobile-friendly web…handheld stylesheet support on mobile devices is currently hit or miss, more often miss than hit. More importantly, handheld stylesheets deal primarily with aesthetics, rather than content and context.

In an article on Designing Mobile Web Sites, Meryl K. Evans outlines the approach to mobile web design, and includes tips and key points to consider when designing for the small screen. Both articles touch on the debate between designing ‘one screen fits all’ (or attempting to get there) using style sheets, and designing specific mobile sites designed for an optimal mobile user experience.

To top it off, Brian Fling writes 10 Reasons to Publish to Mobile. Brian reflects the industry’s thinking that it is time to move to mobile.

With the mobile product lifecycle is moving twice as fast as computers at their peak ten years ago, mobile publishing will soon be a requirement of doing business. Hype aside, there are really good reasons why you should be looking at your mobile publishing strategy� now.

There question whether people are browsing on their mobile devices in the U.S. is still in question. WIth flat rate pricing, and the rise of the MVNO – I think the U.S. is nearly ready to go!

Posted on March 30th, 2006 in Thoughts
Tagged as , , , , , ,
Written by Kelly Goto

15 Responses to “handheld style sheets and getting to zen”

Comments

  1. Bruce Scharlau says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Kelly,

    nice roundup of useful posts by others. The Moll and Fling ones are great - used them for teaching last autumn. However, your link to the Meryl Evans page looks wrong as it doesn’t seem to work correctly.

  2. Kelly says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Bruce - thanks for your feedback. I just tried the link to Meryl’s article and it seems to be working - please try it again? And any other links or references would be fabulous. :-)

  3. Mike Brown says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Of course taking the new, environmentally conscious, approach that Webstock does renders moot the whole question of which stylesheet(s) to use :)

  4. Martin says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Hello Kelly,

    thanks for the post, just the information I was looking for as I would like to start a new (private) web project which should also include mobile!

    Martin

  5. Kelly says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Martin, glad to help. hope to get more mobile web info out as we learn …. attending a ‘mobile monday’ event right now hosted by Russell Beattie and we’ll see if we get more insight into the debate between SVG-t and Flash Lite!

  6. Timothy Gray says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Much like CSS in 2002, design for mobile devices will be what separates serious designers from the crowd in the coming year. It’s great to have leading designers/developers sharing their knowledge so that those of us who don’t yet have a clue how to get started can get moving in the right direction.

  7. Soosixty says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Hi Kelly I read your blog pretty regularly. I have a question: would we need different style sheets for each browser type, when we’re designing a WAP site with xHTML-CSS?

  8. Kelly Goto says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Soosixty - we’re actually trying to simplify this process from browser to browser, and am exploring options now to experiment with xHTML and CSS in a new initiative - to be announced soon! I will say it has to do with the title of this entry and we already have some great people involved to make it a reality. :-)

  9. kosmar says:
    March 30th, 2006

    grat idea to ave a mobilezen, but wont we just need an mobileacid test as well then?

  10. Kelly Goto says:
    March 30th, 2006

    we’re determining the direction now - how to evoke the same ‘aha’ moment of simplicity - i’m currently advocating (4) browser/platform targets and style sheets that display ‘beautifully’ on multiple devices and screen sizes. it is complex, we need to make it simple. starting to advocate for browser standards and EZ mobile authoring is an uphill battle for sure, that is why we are starting this initative. if you have more thoughts on how you would structure a ‘mobileadcidtest’, please let me know - posted or directly to “kelly(at)gotomobile(dot)com”

  11. kosmar says:
    March 30th, 2006

    unfortunatly, i dont know too much about the different platforms. is there a spec which says what css properties should be supported by handhelds. or is that just the plain css2 set?

  12. Johann says:
    March 30th, 2006

    I posted some links to pages that deal with the “embedding CSS for mobile devices” problem in my blog at http://johannburkard.de/blablo.....vices.html Maybe it’s of use to someone.

  13. Kelly Goto says:
    March 30th, 2006

    Thanks Johann! we’ll take a look and as we get more organized, these links will really help.

  14. tobto says:
    March 30th, 2006

    With next year launching of WiMaxed Mobiles designers life will be faster…

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