The Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 Basic Guidelines, brought to you by the Best Practices Working Group as part of the Mobile Web Initiative, offers 60 pointers to creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. The article states however, “Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.” What is unclear to me is whether these guidelines are specifically designed to optimize existing internet web pages for mobile devices or how to best create web pages intended mostly for mobile users?
The article attempts to answer this query by explaining, “Some services have a primarily mobile appeal (location based services, for example). Some have a primarily mobile appeal but have a complementary desktop aspect (for instance for complex configuration tasks). Still others have a primarily desktop appeal but a complementary mobile aspect (possibly for alerting). Finally there will remain some Web applications that have a primarily desktop appeal (lengthy reference material, rich images, for example)…It is likely that application designers and service providers will wish to provide the best possible experience in the context in which their service has the most appeal. However, while services may be most appropriately experienced in one context or another, it is considered best practice to provide as reasonable experience as is possible given device limitations and not to exclude access from any particular class of device, except where this is necessary because of device limitations.”
Thus, it seems the authors suggest that web developers should try to hedge their bets about how people are viewing their site. But apart from standard best practices that cross all platforms (be consistent, minimize pop-ups, etc) which guidelines are most important for web pages that cater overwhelmingly to mobile users and can designers implement them without taking too much away from occasional desktop user?
Moreover, I am curious about determining at what point should a web page invest the resources to adapt some of these guidelines to cater to the mobile user?
Additionally, as I have only minimal experience and skill in building web pages, I’d be interested in seeing a guide to developing a basic site intended solely for mobile users.
