CategoryMobile

July 26, 2012 — Android is an attractive platform for developers, but not all designers share our enthusiasm. Making an app look and feel great across hundreds of devices with different combinations of screen size, pixel density and aspect ratio is no mean feat. Android’s diversity provides plenty of challenges, but creating apps that run on an entire ecosystem of devices is rewarding too. Read more…

July 19, 2012 — The term “responsive design” has gathered a lot of well-deserved buzz among Web designers. As you probably know, it refers to an easy way to dynamically customize interfaces for different devices and to serve them all from the same website, with no need for a separate mobile domain. Read more…

July 12, 2012 — Mobile users and mobile usage are growing. With more users doing more on mobile, the spotlight is on how to improve the individual elements that together create the mobile user experience. Read more…

July 5, 2012 — Despite a great deal of mobile innovation, many creators of financial apps still copy their interface patterns from the desktop Web, even though these patterns are not as well suited to the mobile space. Small screens, custom controls, divided attention and fat fingers demand different thinking when designing for mobile. Read more…

June 28, 2012 — Most of us are pretty familiar with responsive Web design by now. Basically, it uses a combination of a fluid layout and media queries to alter the design and layout of a website to fit different screen sizes. There are other considerations, too. For example, a lot of work has been done on responsive images, ensuring not only that images fit in a small-screen layout, but that the files downloaded to mobile devices are smaller, too. Read more…

June 21, 2012 — If you’re a developer of mobile Web apps, then you’ve heard this before: Native apps perform better than Web apps. But what does “perform better” mean? Read more…

June 18, 2012 — brand new Smashing Books #3 and #3⅓ have been released last month and we’re sincerely grateful for the tremendous feedback, reviews and photos submitted by our truly smashing readers across the world. Read more…

June 14, 2012 — It’s been a couple of years now since the concept of responsive design took the Web design world by storm, and more and more websites are going responsive. But there are still some barriers and potential problems, not the least of these being the challenge of reducing the size of files that you’re sending to mobile devices. Read more…

June 7, 2012 — The mobile Web has gotten a bum rap. It spends most of its time either in the shadow of the desktop or playing the role of the native app’s frumpy friend. Luckily, we’ve got the tools to change that. Progressive enhancement, mobile-first and responsive design can help lead us towards a more unified, future-friendly Web. That’s the good news. The bad news? These tools are worthless if you don’t have license to use them. Read more…

June 1, 2012 — When iOS started to gain momentum, soon after the first iPhone launched, many businesses started to pay attention to apps. The number of apps for iOS grew exponentially, and every company, big and small, rushed to create their own app to support their business. Read more…