Mobile Web Apps

Last week I had the pleasure to give this talk in Multi Screen-X event we had in Campus TLV. Mobile web apps are built using web technologies: HTML5, Javascript and CSS. The main advantage is that you write your application once (e.g. one source code) and deploy it on every platform: Android, Chromebook, Chromebox, Chrome and ya… even iPhone and iPad. Why it’s important today?
Well… as we know, the web is a huge platform and the one common application in any platform is the browser. One look at this set of devices (which is just the tip of the  iceberg) will tell the story:

On mobile devices the browsers’ current state, in terms of HTML5 support is (even) better then on desktops. You can see it per API in CanIUse.com or mobilehtml5.org

Few points from the talk

• The landscape has changed, It’s not pages anymore – but our workflows have not!
• Design from the content out – Do not ‘put’ it on top
• Think on your web app as a collection of (web) components
• Less is more: Any addition has the potential to ruin our MVP (most valuable proposition/product)
• The device landscape is changing fast – so responsive design (and using flexbox or grid layout) will help our apps to look good on future devices as well.
• SPDY is an experimental protocol developed at Google, designed to reduce the latency of web pages. The great news is that SPDY is in Chrome, so why not to use it?
• If you have control on your server, add SPDY support to your Apache server with mod_spdy
• Prioritize what’s important: One focus goal (with few tasks), Easy navigation with relevant information
• Take advantage of mobile-specific functionality: touch, sound, sight and GEO.
• Build for the mobile platform : Speed, easy navigation and… ya speed!
• Optimize : Evaluate and improve performance. Chrome DevTools are a powerful solution to profile your app and improve it.

Misc

• Slides from the talk
• Build better mobile web apps
• Fastbook which is like facebook but working FASTer with HTML5.
• Sencha touch
  

Enjoy.