Learn the Mobile Web

Blogroll

Mobile Web Standards

• CSS 2 Specification
  W3C Specification for CSS Level 2
• CSS Mobile Profile 2.0
  W3C Recommendation for CSS Mobile Prfile 2.0
• Device Description Repository Simple API
  API for reading identifying mobile devices and reading device capabilities from a device repository
• dotMobi
  Company that controls the .mobi TLD.
• ECMAScript Mobile Profile Specification (PDF)
  Open Mobile Alliance specification for ECMAScript Mobile Profile (i.e. JavaScript for mobile devices)
• HTML 5 Specification
  W3C and WHATWG Draft specification of the HTML 5 standard
• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
  Technical organization that governs RFC documents, which define an accepted or proposed Internet standard or standard practice in computer engineering.
• MIME multipart/related Specification (RFC 2387)
  IETF Specification for the multipart/related MIME type
• Mobile Browser Compatibility with JavaScript, AJAX and DOM features
• Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
  W3C’s Best Practices for Mobile Web Development
• Open Mobile Alliance
  Maintainers of specifications for XHTML-MP and other wireless and mobile standards.
• Open Mobile Terminal Platform
  Consortium of mobile operators that aims to standardize mobile data services and security.
• Using MIME (Multipart) Headers Effectively
  How to use MIME content and multipart headers effectively.
• W3C Device APIs and Policy Working Group
  W3C Effort to Standardize Device APIs in JavaScript for Mobile Web and Mobile Widget access to the Mobile Device
• W3C Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies
  W3C Mobile Web Initiative’s Draft Guidelines for Transcoder Behavior
• W3C Mobile Web Application Best Practices
  Best practices for the development and delivery of Web applications on mobile devices.
• W3C Mobile Web Initiative
  Making Web access from a mobile device as simple as Web access from a desktop device.
• W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0
• Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG)
  Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, joint participant in HTML 5 specification with W3C
• Wireless CSS Specification (PDF)
  Open Mobile Alliance specification for Wireless CSS
• XML 1.0 Standard
  XML-based mobile markup languages strictly adhere to XML syntax rules.
• XMLHttpRequest Draft Standard @ W3C
  Working Draft for Standardizing XMLHttpRequest functionality (i.e. AJAX)

Mobile Web Best Practices

• All about Page Weight
  Considering total cost to download a web page to a mobile device.
• Android Debug Bridge
  A bridge connecting an Android mobile device or emulator to the Android SDK. Used for debugging Mobile Web applications and native Android apps.
• Desiging XHTML Content for Nokia Series 60 Platform (PDF)
  Article from Nokia
• dotMobi Switch On! Mobile Web Developer Guide
  Guide for developing compliant .mobi mobile web sites.
• Google Mobile Sitemaps
  Google’s extension to Sitemaps for identifying URLs to Mobile Web content.
• Mobile Design Wiki @ Little Springs Design
  Mobile Design Patterns
• Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
  W3C’s Best Practices for Mobile Web Development
• mobiThinking – Best and Worst of the Mobile Web e-book
  e-book from mobiThinking reviewing the best and worst mobile web sites
• mod_deflate Web response compression module for Apache Web Server
  GZIP and deflate response compression for Apache Web Servers
• Openwave’s Best Practices in XHTML Design
• Opera’s Making Small Devices Look Great
• webOSdev Developer Community
  Palm developer community for webOS mobile development.

Mobile Web Development Experts

• Coding for the Mobile Web
• Comparison of XHTML Mobile Profile and XHTML Basic
  Feature comparison of two popular mobile markup languages.
• Differences between XHTML MP, XHTML Basic, WML, i-mode, and HDML?
  Wild evolutionary path of mobile markup
• Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web
  Luca Passani’s GAP document about mobile web design and development
• Mob Lob
  Mobile Line of Business
• mobiForge
  Mobile developer community owned by dotMobi. Formerly dev.mobi.
• Mobile Browser Compatibility with JavaScript, AJAX and DOM features
• Mobile Design Wiki @ Little Springs Design
  Mobile Design Patterns
• Mobile Web 2.0 eBook by Futuretext
• MobileTech AJAX Tests for Mobile Devices
  MobileTech AJAX Tests for Mobile Devices
• OpenGardens Blog
  Wireless Mobility and Mobile Web 2.0 Blog
• Openwave’s Best Practices in XHTML Design
• Opera’s Making Small Devices Look Great
• Rules for Responsible Reformatting: A Developer Manifesto
  Developer’s Response to Transcoders, Authored by Luca Passani
• Sender 11: Mobile Interaction Design
• Small Surfaces
  mobile UI / UX / interaction design
• The Great WebKit Comparison Table
  Feature comparison between 19 desktop and mobile implementations of the WebKit browser rendering engine.
• Using MIME (Multipart) Headers Effectively
  How to use MIME content and multipart headers effectively.
• WebKit Open Source Project
  Home of the WebKit browser rendering engine, an open-source software project.
• WMLProgramming Yahoo Group
  Busy Yahoo Group and Mailing List discussing WURFL and Mobile Web Development
• Yahoo! Exceptional Performance
  Yahoo!’s research on exceptional Web performance
• Yiibu
  mobile design

Mobile Web Development Tools

• Android Debug Bridge
  A bridge connecting an Android mobile device or emulator to the Android SDK. Used for debugging Mobile Web applications and native Android apps.
• Apache Mobile Filter
  Open-source Mobile Web Switcher using Apache Configuration
• BlackBerry Browser Documentation
  Documentation for several versions of the Blackberry Mobile Web Browser
• Cloud Four's Mobile Browser Concurrency Test
  Mobile Browser Concurrency Test by Cloud Four in Portland, OR. Tests mobile browser request concurrency and client-side caching.
• CVS
  Concurrent Version System (CVS), an open-source source control system.
• DeviceAnywhere
  Remote access to mobile devices in geographies around the world. Commercial software. Greate in-geo testing tool for mobile applications and web sites.
• DeviceAtlas Browsable Device Database
  Browsable and searchable Web interface to the DeviceAtlas device database
• DeviceAtlas Data Explorer
  Compare Characteristics of Thousands of Mobile Devices using Data from DeviceAtlas’s Mobile Device Database
• DeviceAtlas Device Database
  Home Page for DeviceAtlas Device Database
• DeviceAtlas License Info
  Licensing information for DeviceAtlas mobile device database
• DeviceAtlas Properties
  List and description of properties available in the DeviceAtlas mobile device database
• dotMobi
  Company that controls the .mobi TLD.
• ExamDiff
  Free file comparison utility. Useful for mobile web development.
• Frost Mobile Widget Library
  Emerging cross-platform library for mobile widget development. Formerly a mobile AJAX library.
• GAIA Image Transcoder
  On-the-fly image transcoding server
• Google Gears for Mobile Devices
  Framework for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and Android phones
• Google Mobile Sitemaps
  Google’s extension to Sitemaps for identifying URLs to Mobile Web content.
• How to Become a WURFL Contributor
  Guidelines for Becoming a Contributor of Device Data to WURFL
• HTML Tidy
  HTML Tidy corrects common HTML errors and formats HTML for readability.
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
  Description, Tutorials and Software for using JSON to serialize data on the Web.
• JavaScript Support in Opera Mini 4
  Documentation about scripting support in Opera Mini 4.
• JSMin from Douglas Crockford
  Popular minifier for JavaScript
• Mobile Browser Compatibility with JavaScript, AJAX and DOM features
• MobileTech AJAX Tests for Mobile Devices
  MobileTech AJAX Tests for Mobile Devices
• mod_deflate Web response compression module for Apache Web Server
  GZIP and deflate response compression for Apache Web Servers
• Nginx
  Nginx is a lightweight Web server suitable for serving static Web documents (i.e images and stylesheets).
• Opera Mini Emulator
  Web-Based Emulator for Opera Mini Mobile Browser
• Perfecto Mobile – Mobile Device Remoting Service
  Web-Based Mobile Device Remoting Service
• Robot Exclusion Standard
  Specification for the /robots.txt file that controls robot, spider and crawler access to a Web site.
• Safari Web Content Guide for the iPhone
  Web Content Guide for Safari Mobile, the iPhone’s Web Browser
• Sitemap Specification
  Specification for XML Sitemaps, used to provide the most relevant URLs on a Website to a Web crawler.
• Subversion (SVN)
  An excellent open-source source control system. Considered the successor to CVS.
• Test Application for DeviceAtlas (TA-DA)
  Device profiler for DeviceAtlas
• Test Application for DeviceAtlas (TA-DA) Documentation
  Detailed documentation for DeviceAtlas’s TA-DA mobile device profiler
• The Great WebKit Comparison Table
  Feature comparison between 19 desktop and mobile implementations of the WebKit browser rendering engine.
• tinySrc
  Image transcoder for the Mobile Web
• Tortoise SVN
  Windows GUI with shell integration for the Subversion source control system.
• WebKit Port to Series 60 Symbian Platform
  Official home of the WebKit port to Symbian for Nokia Series 60 mobile devices.
• WinDiff
  Microsoft’s free file comparison utility for Windows.
• WinMerge
  Free file comparison utility. Useful for mobile web development.
• WMLProgramming Yahoo Group
  Busy Yahoo Group and Mailing List discussing WURFL and Mobile Web Development
• WMLScript Reference
  Language reference for WMLScript, companion scripting language for WML
• WURFL
  Wireless Universal Resource File
• WURFL Device Database Characteristics
  List and description of characteristics in the WURFL device database.
• WURFL Public Repository
  Searchable Public Repository of the Wurfl DB
• WURFL Software Downloads @ SourceForge
  WURFL software download site at SourceForge.net
• WURFL Test Suite for Mobile Devices
  Test Suite for Web Standards Support on Mobile Devices
• Yahoo! Exceptional Performance
  Yahoo!’s research on exceptional Web performance
• YUI JavaScript and CSS Compressor
  Java tool from Yahoo! for minimizing CSS and JavaScript

Mobile Markup Validators

• Feed Validator for Atom and RSS
  Validates the format of Atom and RSS feeds.
• ready.mobi
  Evaluates mobile-readiness using mobile best practices & standards.
• Validome Web Markup Validator
  Validates HTML, XHTML and WML Markup
• W3C CSS Validation Service
  CSS Validator from the W3C
• W3C Link Checker
  Checks for broken links and anchors in XHTML and HTML documents.
• W3C Markup Validation Service for XHTML and HTML
  Validates XHTML, XHTML-MP and HTML markup (and other niche markups standardized by W3C).
• W3C MobileOK Checker
  Validates mobile-friendliness of a web document using W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0.

Mobile Markup Specifications

• Comparison of XHTML Markup Flavors
  Comparison of XHTML MP versions and XHTML Basic
• Device Description Structures
  An expression language for the structured categorization of devices in content adaptation
• HTML 5 Specification
  W3C and WHATWG Draft specification of the HTML 5 standard
• W3C Document about the Differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5
  W3C Document about the Differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5
• WML Language Reference (PDF)
  Openwave’s reference guide for WML
• WML Specification (PDF)
  WML Language Specification
• WMLScript Reference
  Language reference for WMLScript, companion scripting language for WML
• XHTML Basic 1.1
  XHTML Basic 1.1 Standard
• XHTML Mobile Profile (PDF)
  Open Mobile Alliance specification for XHTML Mobile Profile
• XHTML Mobile Profile and CSS Reference
  OpenWave’s reference guide or XHTML-MP and CSS.
• XML 1.0 Standard
  XML-based mobile markup languages strictly adhere to XML syntax rules.

Mobile Industry

• Android Developer Site
  Android Developer Web Site
• Browsing on Mobile Phones – Nokia Research (PDF)
• Differences between XHTML MP, XHTML Basic, WML, i-mode, and HDML?
  Wild evolutionary path of mobile markup
• dotMobi Switch On! Mobile Web Developer Guide
  Guide for developing compliant .mobi mobile web sites.
• Fierce Mobile Content
  Mobile Content and Mobile Marketing News
• Fierce Wireless
  Wireless Industry and Technology News
• Geek.com Mobile
  Mobile technology news
• mobiThinking
  Help for marketers to understand and exploit new opportunities in the mobile web.
• mobiThinking – Best and Worst of the Mobile Web e-book
  e-book from mobiThinking reviewing the best and worst mobile web sites
• MocoNews.net
  Mobile content and mobile industry news
• Open Mobile Terminal Platform
  Consortium of mobile operators that aims to standardize mobile data services and security.
• RCR Wireless
  Mobile technology, wireless operators, wireless broadband industry news
• Recent Code Changes to WebKit Open Source Project
  Trac timeline showing recent WebKit code changes
• Safari Web Content Guide for the iPhone
  Web Content Guide for Safari Mobile, the iPhone’s Web Browser
• Sender 11: Mobile Interaction Design
• There Goes Dave
  Mobile Web News
• WAP Review
  Mobile Web News and Reviews
• Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG)
  Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, joint participant in HTML 5 specification with W3C
• WebKit Open Source Project
  Home of the WebKit browser rendering engine, an open-source software project.
• WebKit Port to Series 60 Symbian Platform
  Official home of the WebKit port to Symbian for Nokia Series 60 mobile devices.
• Wireless Week
  News and Analysis for Wireless
• Yahoo News: Wireless and Mobile Technology
  Wireless and Mobile Technology News at Yahoo News

Mobile Developer Communities

• Android Developer Site
  Android Developer Web Site
• Apple Developer Connection
  Developer Community for Apple mobile and desktop products
• AT&T DevCentral
  AT&T mobile developer program
• Betavine Open Mobile Application Community
  Vodafone’s open mobile developer community
• BlackBerry Alliance Partner Program
  BlackBerry Partner Program
• BlackBerry Browser Documentation
  Documentation for several versions of the Blackberry Mobile Web Browser
• BlackBerry Developer Zone
  Mobile developer community for the BlackBerry platform.
• Forum Noki
  Mobile developer community for Nokia devices.
• Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web
  Luca Passani’s GAP document about mobile web design and development
• IE Mobile Documentation @ MSDN
  Internet Explorer Mobile documentation at Microsoft Developer Network
• Info about Opera Mini Request Headers
• iPhone Developer Center
  Apple iPhone Developer Site
• JavaScript Support in Opera Mini 4
  Documentation about scripting support in Opera Mini 4.
• LG Mobile Developer Network
  Mobile developer community for LG devices.
• Mobile Monday Global
  Monthly Monday-evening networking events for the mobile industry
• MOTODEV Motorola Mobile Developer Community
  Developer Community for Motorola Mobile Devices
• Orange Partner Program
  Orange mobile developer program
• Rules for Responsible Reformatting: A Developer Manifesto
  Developer’s Response to Transcoders, Authored by Luca Passani
• Samsung Mobile Innovator
  Mobile developer community for Samsung devices.
• Server-Side Capability Detection for Mobile Devices
  A two-part series from dev.opera.com
• SonyEricsson Developer World
  Mobile developer community for SonyEricsson devices.
• Sprint Application Developer Program
  Sprint’s mobile developer community
• Symbian Developer Community
  Symbian (Series 60 OS) developer community
• T-Mobile Partner Network
  T-Mobile (US) Developer Partner Network
• Verizon Developer Program (WAP and BREW)
  For WAP and BREW development and partnerships.
• VZWDevelopers
  Verizon Wireless Developer Community
• webOSdev Developer Community
  Palm developer community for webOS mobile development.
• Windows Mobile for Developers
  Microsoft’s developer program for Windows Mobile

Academic Research

• Device Fragmentation of Mobile Applications
  Academic research paper analyzing aspects of fragmentation of mobile applications.

Mobile Web Analytics

• AdMob Metrics
  Popular Devices Surfing the Mobile Web by Region
• DeviceAtlas Data Explorer
  Compare Characteristics of Thousands of Mobile Devices using Data from DeviceAtlas’s Mobile Device Database
• Opera’s State of the Mobile Web
  Mobile Industry Insights from Opera

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

• Aptana Studio
  Aptana Studio is a dual-licensed IDE for Web development
• Eclipse
  Eclipse IDE for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
• Komodo
  Komodo is a commercial IDE by ActiveState for Web development on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms
• Microsoft Visual Studio
  Microsoft Visual Studio IDE for Windows platforms
• NetBeans
  Netbeans software development IDE for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris
• NuSphere PhpED
  NuSphere proprietary IDE for PHP
• Zend Studio
  Zend Studio is a proprietary IDE for Web development in PHP