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Native App vs Web App – Which should you choose?

October 15th, 2012


As time goes on, the number of mobile devices that are used to access the web just keeps on growing.  It is showing no sign of slowing down.

With this, we are seeing more and more applications being developed for the now vast array of devices available to us, whether that’s on a mobile phone or a tablet – the list goes on!

Say you get that ‘big idea’ and you think that you can make an app for it, where do you start?  The first thing you need to consider is what sort of app you would like it to be, a native application, or a web application (or both of course!).  In this article I’ll be taking a look at the differences between the two and also their strengths and weaknesses.  Hopefully it will help you choose the correct path on your app development journey with us.

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Changing a WordPress site’s domain name

September 10th, 2012


If you want to change a WordPress site’s domain name (or base URL), which will often happen when you’re copying a site from staging to production, or from local to live, there are a number of steps to following, outlined at http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress.

However, here is a shortened summary of how I run this on non-multisite sites (multisite sites are a pain!):

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Large Application icons for iPhone & iPad apps

June 19th, 2012


Please see the following link for a summary of the new requirements for application icons for all apps submitted from July 2012 onwards:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/IconsImages/IconsImages.html

- the key one is that now an additional application icon of 1024×1024 is required. The icon is for the app on the App Store.

Posted in Mobile, Uncategorized | No Comments »

What are the best tools for accurate Cross-Browser Testing?

May 4th, 2012


One would almost certainly be forgiven for thinking that given the vast array of tools that web developers have at their disposal, there would be one single tool that would allow you to accurately test for all browsers.

Unfortunately this is not the case.

Modern browsers are being updated regularly, which increasingly makes for a more seamless testing experience.  But at the time of writing, us developers and designers still have to cross swords with Internet Explorer and its older versions.  Support for IE6 was dropped at the turn of the year and our main battle now lies with IE7.  Although The Internet Explorer 7 Countdown currently reports that worldwide usage is now around the 4% mark, although different regions report higher figures than others which requires us to support IE7 for just that little bit longer, fingers crossed.

There are numerous tools that are available to test IE7 from simulators and web based solutions through to legacy versions and here I’m going to run through what I’ve used in the past and what I’m currently using now to get the best possible results.
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Extending WP-Members plugin: hiding private posts from non-logged in users

March 6th, 2012


I’ve been using the excellent WP-Members plugin, to extend the Swansea Community Church website, and have been pleased with its ability to offer all the membership/registration functionality that I need to add a membership section.

However there a couple of elements that I wanted to add to it to focus it for my needs.

  1. Firstly, to set a post as public or private (overriding the default ‘block all’ or ‘allow all’ settings), I needed to add a custom field to that post. This is fine for me as a developer, but as the admin of the site is not a developer, I wanted to make it more user friendly.
  2. Secondly, I want to be able to remove private posts from the loop (and this covers posts, podcasts, and things like the Recent Posts plugin, etc) when a visitor is not logged into the website, but then show everything to the logged-in user.

This blog article is the second of two articles. Find the first here: Extending WP-Members plugin: Add meta box for public/private

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Posted in Uncategorized, Wordpress | 1 Comment »

Extending WP-Members plugin: Add meta box for public/private

March 5th, 2012


I’ve been using the excellent WP-Members plugin, to extend the Swansea Community Church website, and have been pleased with its ability to offer all the membership/registration functionality that I need to add a membership section.

However there a couple of elements that I wanted to add to it to focus it for my needs.

  1. Firstly, to set a post as public or private (overriding the default ‘block all’ or ‘allow all’ settings), I needed to add a custom field to that post. This is fine for me as a developer, but as the admin of the site is not a developer, I wanted to make it more user friendly.
  2. Secondly, I want to be able to remove private posts from the loop (and this covers posts, podcasts, and things like the Recent Posts plugin, etc) when a visitor is not logged into the website, but then show everything to the logged-in user.

This blog article will address (1), and I’ll focus on (2) in a second post.
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Posted in Uncategorized, Wordpress | 1 Comment »

Setting the meta description in the All in One SEO plugin

January 10th, 2012


A little tip to save you the time it took me to work out what was going on with the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress, and why a site I recently converted from static to WordPress lost its Google ranking for a while. Each page had an optimised title and meta description, yet when I googled the site, the meta description wasn’t showing up in Google.

With the All in One SEO plugin, you are able to set an optimised page title, and a meta description. This is done from the Edit page screen for the pages in question. I’d set this information for the Home page (which was a static page), so why wasn’t it shown up?

It turns out that the All in One SEO plugin doesn’t use the title and description set on the ‘Home’ page’s Edit page screen, even if it’s been set. Instead it looks at the Settings -> All in One SEO page instead, which has two fields: ‘Home Title’ and ‘Home Description’. I would argue that this is not an obvious place to store this information, and that the plugin should be implemented to look at the Home page’s ‘Edit page screen’ details, if it’s not set here.

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Posted in Uncategorized, Wordpress | 2 Comments »

Mobile Applications vs Mobile websites

December 5th, 2011


 

A common request from clients is for a mobile application to partner their website (“I’d like an iPhone/iPad app”). This is not a bad request in itself, but I often will discuss with them their reasons for wanting an app, so that they are not spending unnecessary budget on development. Quite often, a mobile website will do the same job or even a better job, than an application.

Strengths and Weaknesses

It’s important to consider the strengths of a mobile application versus a mobile website:

  • A mobile app can access all/most hardware capabilities (e.g. camera, geo location, offline data storage, compass, standard interface elements like tabs and list views). A mobile app can be hardware optimised.
  • A mobile website can access some but not all hardware capabilities (e.g. geo location, offline data storage). A mobile website is limited to the browser’s capabilities and Javascript engine speed, but there is a lot that a browser can do.

 

  • A mobile app can generate income via the App Store or Android Marketplace. This means that the developer doesn’t have to add a sales mechanism (e.g. merchant banking, PayPal, etc).
  • A mobile website can generate income only through online payment engines (e.g. PayPal, etc).

 

  • A mobile app (on iPhone/iPad) can only sell subscriptions to content through the App Store, giving 30% to Apple. Apple owns the relationship with the consumer, rather than the client.
  • A mobile website can completely own the relationship with the client, which can be leveraged for other sales opportunities.

 

  • A mobile app can be launched via a URL, but managing this URL cross-device is challenging. This is an issue when sending emails with links to content.
  • A mobile website can be integrated with an email strategy or other linking. A mobile website URL is cross-browser compatible.
  • A mobile app has to be found via the App Store / Android Marketplace – searching for and getting found by users is haphazard to say the least. A mobile app launch should be accompanied by multiple marketing strategies including the web, to point users to the App Store / Android Marketplace.
  • A mobile website can be found by Google, and standard web marketing strategies and SEO can be used to bring users to your website. In addition, existing users of your website do not have to download a separate application; they can instead be switched automatically to your mobile website and brought online to the mobile experience.

Case Study: The Financial Times

A good example of an organisation choosing a mobile website over a mobile application is the Financial Times. They chose to remove all their mobile applications from the App Store  / Android MarketPlace, and developed a feature rich mobile website. See the following article: http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/ft-s-html5-app-has-1m-users/016218. Some of the standout figures include:

  • 20% of all online page views are via the mobile website
  • 15% of all new digital subscriptions come via the mobile website.

The lesson is that we should consider the requirements of the mobile experience for the user, and then choose a platform (website or application) following this. Don’t assume that an application is always the solution.

Posted in Mobile, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Why Responsive Design Actually Begins on the Server

December 1st, 2011


There is a very interesting presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/yiibu/adaptation-why-responsive-design-actually-begins-on-the-server . It covers the challenges in responsive mobile site creation, and proposes a hybrid solution of device profiles to solve it.

The first half of the presentation is worth showing anyone who does not understand the challenge of developing a mobile website that works well on multiple mobile devices, not just on the latest and greatest iPhone / Samsung / HTC.

It’s strongest point is that many people (especially in this current financial climate) will not have the latest leading edge device. In fact, your cutting edge, state of the art device from 2 years ago (read iPhone 3/3G) is now old and destined for the mobile device rubbish heap. However many people will not automatically upgrade, but will keep them, and thus there is a great proliferation of devices which don’t support the latest HTML5, slower Javascript, etc.

Added to this is that the word ‘smartphone’ retains a nebulous definition, and in fact today’s ‘cheap’ devices contain most of the features that a smartphone has (e.g. touch screen, browser), however their ability to serve the web may not be as perfect as Apple’s Mobile Safari.

This is the reason that content adaptation has had a number of solutions, via examples such responsive design, server-side detection and adaption, etc.

The solution proposed in this system is not a simple solution. It proposes an aggregation of device information (e.g. from DeviceAtlas) on top of a default device profile, stored in cookies, sent via Javascript to the server to analyse. To implement it for a client, I for one would hope to see a library to help achieve this without the larger development cost, so I will be watching closely.

There are also some interesting suggestions at the end of the presentation about some potential options for the future, e.g. changing the <img> from having one source file to having multiple source files (similar to the way the <video> tag is currently done). I would be interested in this option, however the reality is that the HTML change process is long and tortuous and thus I won’t be holding my breath.

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Posted in Mobile, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How to prevent WordPress from requesting FTP details to download themes or updates

October 11th, 2011


WordPress will by default request your FTP details when downloading any of the following:

  • Plugins (and updates)
  • WordPress core updates

This can cause problems with your site if someone changes the details by accident, or loses the FTP password. If you don’t have an FTP client on your server this will prevent you downloading such updates or plugins via the admin.
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