This has been the biggest issue for some time now. How I want to execute it. All one stylesheet or separate ones and have the server load it depending on what it is given. Each one has its own drawbacks and perks to it. Reading about mobile design these last three days has slowly opened my eyes into what the next few years will be like when it comes to web design.

Years ago when the iPhone first made its début to the world the only thing I was thinking about was how everybody would interact and view things.

My first mobile experience was with a Sony Ericsson phone. Boy was that a mistake on my part. The way everything was laid out made it almost unbearable to really try to do anything. Navigation was decent but still took forever to get to the link I wanted to ‘click’ and go to. Using the buttons to pseudo scroll up, down and sideways was not easy. Make one mistake and often times I would have to start over. Sites took longer than I wanted to load but there really wasn’t an option to use a wifi connection with the phone.

Thinking back on those experiences with how mobile phones rendered pages it has given me some ideas on how I like seeing navigation and how to implement it. Navigation is the key when it comes to any site. Being able to know what to look for without having to look makes for a great web experience. What I mean by that is that the end-user should not have to look around the entire site’s page to find why they were looking for. A perfect example of this is just about any shopping site. The search form is one of the first things that has some emphasis to it without us really knowing.

A good study I would love to see is how many people visit a shop site and don’t use the search form. Mind you this is for fairly newcomers that I’m thinking of instead of repeat customers. Maybe one day.

Trying to view a site on a really small screen made me wonder how things would change in the future. Yeah, I like to sometimes think like that. With touch screens becoming more and more popular the next stage is of course is being able to cater to that little market. True, that demographic is small at the moment but in the next few years it will only see an increase.

Mobile first design was first coined a few years ago but has recently been what I feel is the newest standard for most sites. One of the things I have come to hate about it is scale.

Let me elaborate on what I mean. I am one of those people who likes to view a site with the browser expanded to take up the entire screen. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. One of the methods I have seen when it comes to creating a responsive site is creating break points. Usually what that means is that when a person resizes the browser the site adjusts to that new size. I don’t like it. Yeah it does have its advantages but it also has some drawbacks that I, personally, don’t like.

The biggest one really being the loss of certain elements. In Windows 7 you have the ability to set a program to take up half the screen and another to use the other if you want. I like doing this when I am comparing cameras, computer parts or just about anything I’m shopping for. I, like most people, love a really good deal so what better way than comparing two sites at the same time? Well, when the window gets fitted to the new size the responsive aspect takes over. Often times it doesn’t effect it much since some of the sites I browse often have a min-width of about 700 pixels and my monitor is wide enough to handle it. Sorry, geek speak.

One thing I found really interesting is that most new smartphones don’t listen to the

handheld

property when using a media query. A little strange since most mobile devices are handheld devices.

Options and decisions. One file or several. I still can’t decide. I may just have to use several ones while using server requests to help. It would be pointless to use AJAX since the page loads once on any device and people don’t resize their browser window and can’t do it on any mobile device unless they change the orientation but that has no adverse effect and shouldn’t. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Mobile web design: here I come!