Mobile Web Design

Here are some tips from my experience on mobile web design.

Couple of years back you needed to learn WML (Wireless Markup Language ) to design a web site for mobile phones but that is not the case anymore. Mobile web design is not different than normal web design! If you have simple html, JavaScript and a server-side language skills you can design a mobile web site. DO NOT PAY companies to convert your web site to mobile web site.

Having said that you need to keep in mind couple of points below.

Design must be simple:  Mobile phones have small screens and memory. You need to make sure you are not overloading web site with information. Make it simple as possible. Do not use too much JavaScript.

Design touch screens on mind:  Most of the modern phones have touch screens and navigating around a site with fingers is quite hard. Do not make your visitors suffer. Try to design link tittle as large as possible without ruining overall structure of your site.

Test your web site: Try your web site on as many phones as possible. Although it would be ok to design for most common screen dimensions of today (240*320) as phones get advanced their resolution and screen sizes increases. Try not to set font size too small. You can use different css for different phones to achieve better results.

Obey web standards: Current standard for mobile web design is XHTML Mobile. You caa read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML_Mobile_Profile. Set your mime type correctly to application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml. But keep in mind that if you want your mobile web site accessible via PC you should set server mime type to txt/html then set mime type on page with head tag <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml; charset=utf-8" />

You do not need special hosting for a mobile site! Just use your current hosting.

You do not need a .mobi domain name for your mobile site. 

If you are using Asp.Net, do not use Asp.Net controls, post backs etc: Asp.net's VIEWSTATE feature clutters your page and keeps load times high.

Try to use Url Reverting to make page names short and clear