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Mobile Websites: Ten Big Mistakes You Should Avoid

Doug Williams @ 5:44 am

This blog entry was posted on January 28, 2009.

Here are 10 ways to ruin a mobile website design. Designing for the small screen is very different than for the desktop. Mobile websites are being added quickly by businesses of all sizes. Care needs to be taken to design your mobile website correctly. These are taken from W3C mobile web best practices

  1. Structure: Having too many large number of navigation links on a page or having to navigate through to many pages to reach content. This must be carefully balanced.
  2. Graphics: Do not use graphics for spacing purposes. Do not use large images that will load slowly. Mobile web pages should not exceed 10KB in size.
  3. Pop-up Windows: Do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user.
  4. Image Maps: Do not use image maps unless you know the device supports them effectively.
  5. Frames: Do not use frames. Many mobile devices do not support frames. In addition, frames are recognized as being generally problematic.
  6. Color: Overuse of color. Mobile devices often do not have good color contrast. Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast.
  7. Tables: Do not use tables. Do not use nested tables. Do not use tables for layout. Tables do not work well on limited size screens.
  8. Cookies: Do not rely on cookies being available. Many mobile devices do not implement cookies or offer only an incomplete implementation.
  9. Fonts: Do not rely on support of font related styling. Mobile devices often have few fonts and limited support for font sizes and effects (bold, italic etc.).
  10. Input: Avoid free text entry where possible. Provide pre-selected default values where possible. Keep the number of keystrokes to a minimum. Where possible, use selection lists and radio buttons.

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Related posts:

  1. Designing a Website for the Mobile Web
  2. 7 Mistakes of Highly Ineffective Websites
  3. Is Your Website Apple iPhone Ready?

Filed under: Mobile Web

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 5:44 am and is filed under Mobile Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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