Categories
Development

Indulge in Avalon mobile website

I’ve been working on a mobile website for the great folks at Indulge in Avalon. A few months back we had just launched a site for them powered by Joomla!, and since we had a solid foundation built it really made a mobile version much easier to develop.

The first step was figuring out what type of mobile experience to offer. Google Analytics really helped us out here. We were able to get a good idea of what type of mobile devices have been visiting the site, browser types, etc. – amazing info! Due to visitor information and features needed, we decided to go with a mobile website vs developing a mobile application(s) at this time.

Next was simplifying the experience for the mobile user. This site primary features local businesses of Avalon, so we wanted to really focus on that and make it as easy as possible for a mobile user to navigate. A simple iOS like list navigation really worked well for the data we were delivering. A user could easily drill down for details and back up again.

Then we worked of speed, speed and speed. The mobile website makes use of no images in it’s interface, it’s all CSS driven and if you have a really spiffy device takes advantage of gradients and rounded corners, etc. If you don’t have a super new device, it’s still attractive and fully functional. Minimal use of http requests and minified code is used as well to squeeze every little byte out of the site. All this savings really makes for a fast site, even on slower connections.

All in all this has been a very great experience. The clients being so easy and understanding to work with really help in making this work as well as it does. They know what they want, deliver their parts and are open to my suggestions on the areas of expertise. There’s still some minor areas to finish up and optimize even further, but please feel free to check out the mobile site by either visiting www.indulgeinavalon.com in  your mobile device or you can access the mobile site directly at m.indulgeinavalon.com

Categories
Video Games

Metroid other M

Metroid other MBeen playing Metroid other M for a few weeks now. I know that it had gotten some mixed reviews when it was released but I thought it was a great game. The third person and first person perspectives worked pretty well to me.

The cutscenes and story are what really set it apart from previous Metroid and  really other Nintendo games in general. Samus actually spoke and had a voice, which was cool to hear. The game takes place right after Super Metroid (waaaaaaaaay back on the SNES).

Gameplay is excellent too, it was a nice change from the Prime series (which were amazing games) and their first person view. Awesome game, my only real complaint was that it weren’t longer. However there is an epilogue after finishing it, so that extends gameplay a bit.

Categories
Development

Simple Mobile Detection Redirect

Been working on a simple mobile version of a website I’d done for a client in the past recently. We can a user on most popular mobile devices to be automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site when they visit the main website.

So I went way back to some User-Agent sniffing to accomplish this. I thought I was done with the whole User-Agent redirecting different versions of site’s, but in this case it does work really well.

Just collect the User-Agent header using PHP there run it against a switch statement for each mobile device we’re checking against.

Just look for an instance of a device specific string using preg_match() in PHP.

iPod/iPhone and Android example:

case (preg_match('/ipod/i', $user_agent) || preg_match('/iphone/i', $user_agent));
        header('Location: ' . $redirect);
	exit;
break;
 
case (preg_match('/android/i', $user_agent));
        header('Location: ' . $redirect);
	exit;
break;
Categories
Books

Programming the Mobile Web

Programming the Mobile WebIt’s still tough finding good sources of information when developing for the mobile web. I’ve found amazing resources if you’re developing native applications, but when developing mobile friendly sites it’s a different story.

Been reading Programming the Mobile Web and even though I still have a few chapters to go, must say that it’s a must own if you’re a web developer who is interested in making your site mobile friendly or even developing a mobile version of your site.

The book does a great job covering all the different platforms and browsers to account for (it’s so crazy how many there are) as well as best practices to handle all the variety out there. Even if you have a good understanding of developing for the mobile, I’m sure you’ll find a few useful tips along the way.

An excellent resource that I’m sure I’ll be opening up many times again long after I’m done reading through it.

Categories
Development

Closure Compiler

I’ve been using minimizing tools on my Javascript files for quite some time now. Most notably YUI Compressor, and it does an awesome job for me. Excellent job minimizing Javascript as well as CSS files.

Recently I’ve give Closure Compiler a try at Javascript compression and have been pleased with the results so far. It not only minimizes and obfuscates files, but also compiles them as well.

The rewritten code it spits out is not suitable for human reading, so be sure you always keep an original of the source to be modified. I have typically been saving 24% off the original file size. That’s typically 2x the compression I’d get if I simply gzipped the file.

Very cool tool, try it out.

Categories
Video Games

Dragon Quest IX Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Dragon Quest IXPicked up Dragon Quest IX a few weeks ago at Toys R Us, they had a fine deal where you got a $15 gift card with the purchase of the game. I was very proud of the fine deal I had gotten. I always was a fan of the JRPG since I played the first Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest series was called Dragon Warrior in the US) back in 1989 for the NES.

The mechanics and gameplay were what would be expected in such a game. It did make really cool use of multiplayer with up to 4 simultaneous players using Nintendo DS’s. This was really well done and it’s a shame I really didn’t play it on multiplayer much, as you could tell that the game was really meant to take advantage of multiplayer. If I were in 5th grade multiplayer wouldn’t been a must.

The graphics and sound were very impressive for a DS game, some of the finest I have played. Story was pretty solid too, and actually funny at times. I did get a little chuckle a few times. Between the main storyline and all the side quests there is much gameplay to be had with this title.