Becoming Tablet-friendly with your Website
The recent CES convention that was held in Las Vegas at the beginning of this new year reports “without doubt 2011 will be the year of the tablet”. Tablets, such as the iPad, and other emerging Android-based models are gaining more and more momentum and are expected to continue to do so. Does this mean you now need to develop, in addition to your standard website, a tablet-friendly website?
This topic is very broad and the scope is near impossible to contain to one article; however, I wanted for now to throw out a few talking points. Sevenforty is committed to helping our customers adapt to these technologies and there is much to discuss.
Should we stop using Adobe Flash? Apple is not a proponent of Adobe Flash on their iPad. Steve Jobs stated just last April:
“Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.”
Fighting back, Adobe has focused on developing a Flash player specifically for the Android OS. In addition, Adobe has created Adobe Air, allowing developers to create stand-alone applications that are not browser specific and according to Adobe, run on the Android OS and Blackberry Tablet OS. Whether or not Adobe is ready and capable of handling the new tablets that are reportedly going to be the big hit of 2011, one can assume they are going to give a serious effort at making it happen and seem focused on preparing for the expected onslaught of Android tablets. At this stage in the game, if you have a Flash-heavy website, you can assume it probably won’t do well on an iPad.
Test your current website to see if it is iPad-friendly. Safari offers a user agent string to allow you to use a standard Safari browser to simulate an iPad environment. Following the steps detailed by Apple, you can see what your website will look like on an iPad.
Use an online emulator to see what your website might look like on an Android mobile device, such as one running the Opera browser. There are many other “emulators” one can try using for other browsers and platforms. Some are a bit bogus while others can be fairly helpful.
Keep it simple and just render the data your mobile visitors need to see. Depending on the nature of your business, whether it is e-commerce oriented or data driven, give your customers the information they need rather than an overload of imagery and other bells and whistles that can slow down your content delivery. Remember – tablets are mobile. The internet access on these devices is often dependent on shared WiFi hotspots, cellular coverage, and other wireless technologies – don’t leave your customer waiting any longer than necessary. Google often researches and discusses web site speed and its importance.
“Because the cost of slower performance increases over time and persists, we encourage site designers to think twice about adding a feature that hurts performance if the benefit of the feature is unproven.”
Many of our customers are already prepared to quickly adapt and ensure their business has a solid presence with this growing technology. I know this constant need for technology change can sometimes be exasperating, but remember – change and progress go hand in hand – contact us and we’ll get you on track!
Stephan wrote on Mar 08, 2011 06:26
The tablet is definitely here to stay: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/tablet-sales-to-spike-in-2011-forrester-says/
It makes a lot of sense as well particularly for users that primarily use their PCs for email and web use.