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October 15, 2009

The sad state of the mobile Web gets even sadder

Desktop browsers are undergoing a technological renaissance -- so why are smartphones stuck in the Dark Ages?

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Last week, I pondered Adobe's big push to position Flash as a platform for mobile devices. It's facing an uphill battle, particularly when it's forced to compile Flash apps down to native binaries to get them to run on the iPhone. Open Web standards seem like a much better development target for today's smartphones -- but not even the mobile Web is a sure bet. The problem, in a nutshell, is scalability.

When developers talk about scalability, they're usually talking about scaling up. That is, when confronted with an ever-increasing load, can the application make efficient use of all the available resources to meet the demand? Web applications have always been pretty good at this (when they're coded properly), and modern advances are making them better.

[ Is unified mobile app dev a fantasy? InfoWorld's Paul Krill explores the debate. | Get the InfoWorld editors' 20-page "Mobile 2.0" Deep Dive PDF report, a hands-on look at the new generation of mobile devices ]

Throw mobile into the mix, however, and developers face a whole new challenge. Now their applications need to be able to scale down, too -- to deliver the nearest-possible equivalent to the desktop experience on devices that lack processor power, screen resolution, network bandwidth, and storage capacity -- all at the same time. That's a tough nut to crack -- not just for runtimes like Flash and Java, but for Web standards-based applications, too -- and it's getting harder all the time.

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TechieXP 15-Oct-09 8:27am
Mobile technology was designed to give you basic desktop support. The concept was to offer you an ability to do similar tasks. If you need full blow web, then that is what laptops are four. I am sure phones will soon be using Intel Atom CPU and some phones already have 1Ghz processors...but they aren't as powerful as 1ghz desktop versions. Scaling down shouldn't need to happen. Hardware simply needs to scale up. I also don't understand why everyone is having problems with having a full blown browser in a phone. When I use a Windows Mobile device which is basically using IE6, the pages look exactly like they do on my desktop but smaller. Other browsers do a pretty good job, but they are so slow. Most sites are just text and pictures and these shouldn't overwhelm a phone. But if you need media playback like Flash or need Java than a netbook is a better option. I actually don't like viewing web pages in a phone. Its just to small and you lose the experience when you have to zoom and constantly move the page back and forth to read it. I think the the sites where the dev has option to simply create a mobile page is the best option. It places the content that actually needs to be seen. I think concerning ourselves with browsing on phones is asking to much to fast. Its a phone. Its main core usage is calling...teh other stuff is nice and cool to have, but we need to be understand that anything created on a smaller scale will have limitations. That's why they created netbooks. It offer the small size, but yet has enough power to do full scale web browsing. And some are cheaper then many of the phones that do less. The problems with phones is power. Applications like flash and others put a huge strain on those itsy bitsy processors. All that heat consumes more battery juice, from a battery that is barely powerful enough to keep the device running. I am so looking forward to flash hitting mobile phones, however at what price? Phones aren't ready yet. They need a much improved power source and faster chips. That way devs won't have to scale back. And for what some of these phones cost...they should be more powerful than they are.
watunda 15-Oct-09 9:07am
Developer skills count. There is a lot of sloppy design and coding out there, enabled in part by lack of usability skills and the abundance of cheap memory and CPU horsepower. Forcing developers to work in a smaller space can be beneficial. This is one reason UNIX and its variants are still around in a major way today - UNIX was written back when resources like memory and disk were expensive, so the developers had to be sharp and write tight, efficient code. Another example is iTunes. Selecting and purchasing a song for the first time using a PC and the iTunes website is confusing, whereas selecting and purchasing a song on an iPhone could not be simpler.
Anthony Collins 15-Oct-09 9:30am
A suggestion would be to look at applications like PC2MePlus for the iPhone. It's awesome. It's true: "PC2Me is low cost, high performance real time remote access to a PC from your iPhone. You access, control, manage, and display any system features or resources." I even use it as a way to activate my home security system. Any motion in the driveway is detected, recorded, and I receive an SMS instantly. Again, awesome!
JennaSys 15-Oct-09 10:36am
Mobile apps need to be designed for the limitations of the platform. Trying to use an app that works well on a 20" screen on a mobile device makes no sense at all. TechieXP and watunda got it right, faster processors will only drain the battery faster and still result in a miserable user experience. OTOH, designing the app specifically for a mobile device can result (if done properly) in an efficient, useable proxy for the desktop version. Doing it that way does force the developer to consider the basic essence of what the app is mainly used for. Generally speaking, by the time you tweak a run-anywhere app enough to be acceptable on both desktop and mobile platforms, you could have just used the same resources to develop better versions for the individual platforms.
JaniceJ 16-Oct-09 1:17am
Instead of working, sometimes I'd rather be fighting the man – and Trapster can help people do that. Well, not in any kind of violent sense or otherwise. Trapster is a smartphone app that alerts a person to where all the police are in their immediate area, so you know where and how you can avoid a ticket. Cops evidently can't make do on the generous budget they're given from taxes, and therefore have to gouge us for more instead of fighting ACTUAL crime. (Oh, yes he did!) Not only will it locate cruisers, but also red light and speed cameras. The great thing is that Trapster is free – so you can stick it to the man without needing cheap payday loans.
nrm 25-Oct-09 5:36pm

I've posted a response to your "Sad State of the Mobile Web" article. It's in my blog at: http://blog.arcanedomain.com/2009/10/a-response-to-neil-mcallister-on-th...

Thank you.

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