Thursday, June 19, 2014

Mobile is a Feature

It is frequently the case that developers coming from a desktop web application background mostly see the mobile environment as a set of constraints superimposed on a stack that they know. Yet it is not all about constraints and indeed some specificity of mobile environment make them more desirable than desktops. This is a reaction similar to that which print designers had when they started dabbling into the early Web: limited fonts and colors, limited layout abilities, etc. when in fact these were offset by valuable features such as flowable and zoomable text, far broader accessibility, search, cut and paste and so on.

The situation with the Web on mobile devices is comparative. Many mobile applications are only relevant because you can use them while being yourself mobile: you don't need to know if your flight connection is late unless you're presently connecting, you rarely need to figure out where you are while sitting at your office desk, and you're probably less likely to play Sudoku on your computer than you are while commuting.

New interaction methods brought about by mobile devices such as touch or vocal UIs tend to still be more pertinent, powerful, and usable there. Likewise, while it can be fun for a few demos to check that one's laptop can indeed send orientation events to the browser, shaking it around as a game controller is likely to get tiring soon. And a whole horde of location-based services make a lot more sense while on the move.

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