VS: The devices-universal websites "myth" and the semantic web

>Maybe some sort of strategy with images. Currently images are the
blockers. They're expensive to download and manipulate.

Surely. Images will be a relevant issue when companies want to maintain their brand across various device groups. When there are easier mechanisms to build multi-device sites, companies need to think what are the key elements for feflecting their brand (and thus maintain trust for the particular commercial service) across device categories. It is not OK (for certain types of services) to build a really rich site for a Web client and a text-only version for hand-helds.  Therefore I think that a really important job for the best practices group would be to think of the "minimum common nominators" for a commercial multi-device service. Also considering that some devices may (still in the future) have image viewing turned off, and it may therefore be worthwhile thinking of  CSS-only based solutions as a substitute. Not to mention the general alt tags etc. that are a must, obviously. At the moment, images are mostly a drag. However, even now, take a good new phone and produce a well-designed mobile site with images (small, well positioned, used only when necessary), and things go smoothly. In the future bandwidth will only get upwards. . And it should be remembered that user experience is not only about swiftness and well-targeted content; is also about pleasing and accurate visualisation, among other things..
 
Again, adaptation-only development mechanisms are likely not to succeed. Layouts and content mappings must change across device categories. Try www.helsinginsanomat.fi with any mobile browser, and you'll discover what browser-based adaptation can never be the answer for everything. Opera does a good job by placing all elements below each other, but still the end result is horrific and basically useless.  No offence for the site, it's rather nice when used from a regular Web browser. Anyway, back to images: although images can be adapted on the fly, many images require multiple versions for providing a good user experience. Therefore, image management gets more challenging with multi-device sites and it would be nice to see some tools and guidelines for making this easier.

> I wish there was widespread support for a scalable bitmap graphics
format:
http://natalian.org/archives/2005/01/21/images/
 
Indeed. Now the support is practically non-existent for real-life cases..
 
Antti

Received on Tuesday, 21 June 2005 20:19:07 UTC