The Mobile Case for Progressive Enhancement

I recently read a fantastic reminder to progressivly enhancement for Javascript. Jack Bishop and I gave a presentation at BK.js a few weeks ago about progressive enhancement for the mobile web (thanks Marco Carag!) During the Q&A, someone asked “With all this diversity and inconsistent/shaky support for this Javascript for mobile browsers, why don’t we just rely more on HTML?” EXACTLY. Yet it was asked as a question. There’s a mentality that in order to do create functional experiences in [...]

Fixed Positioning in Mobile Browsers

Fixed positioned elements (typically headers or footers) are extremely common conventions for native mobile platforms, so naturally fixed elements found their way into mobile browsers. Web designers are used to fixing elements to the window using CSS’s position: fixed, however, in the land of mobile browsers, support for fixed positioning is far less universal and is way more quirky. I set up a demo to test fixed positioning support across mobile browsers. You can view the demo here. I was [...]

Mobile Web Best Practices Roadmap

Mobile Web Best Practices is a site to help people make great mobile web experiences. Since the site launched last month, there’s been a lot of great feedback and great ideas to make this a better resource for anyone taking the plunge into the mobile web. Over the next few months, I really hope to take the site to the next level. Here’s some features on the site’s horizon: Pattern library Articles and Tutorials Topics section Stat Center Add and [...]

For a Future-Friendly Web

We need to start thinking and acting in a more future-friendly way when approaching web design. The diversity of web-enabled devices is increasing at an alarming rate. We have to rethink our content and the contexts in which our content is viewed.