One of the biggest problems facing mobile web developers is making sites share the same level of user experience across all platforms. The approach i recomend is to make your application scalable enough to adapt to different screen resolution and features. This means you must know alot about the phone before hand, the response to this usualy “we can possibly collect all that information”. Yes I agree but, we already have people doing this work and donating it as open source.
There are two open source database that i like to use:
- For ASP.NET there is “The Mobile Device Browser File” this is an open source browser file its hosted on codeplex.http://mdbf.codeplex.com/
- For all other Development Platforms I suggesst WURFL (Wireless Universal Resource File). http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
These resource files gives us great control over what type of content can be served out to the device requesting information. This means that your mobile site has to intelligently make decision on the information that you are now provided, because now you know screen resolutions, if a the mobile device can handle video. Use this information wisely dont not try to make a use case for everyphone. Group phones based on ability and screen size.
Group devices into categories for example the nextGen Group can be composed of iphone, android, and other touch phones.
