Rapid Web News

I previously posted on how Nokia open-sourced the Symbian mobile operating system and the advantages this will bring to mobile web developers. Nokia has now released their first mobile device based on the open-source version of Symbian, the Nokia N8 phone.

It is the first version of the software since the Symbian foundation announced that it had made its code open source in February.

The Foundation – which includes Nokia, Motorola and Samsung amongst others – gave away the code to developers for free in the hope that it would help speed up the pace of improvements. Any organisation or individual can now use and modify it.

The software in the N8 allows the phone to have multi-touch and multi-tasking, meaning more than one application can be open at any one time.

The device will be Nokia’s flagship smartphone. It can be plugged into home theatres and supports surround sound as well as high-quality video.

Social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, can be displayed on the home screen in a single application.

Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said he was “stoked” that Nokia had chosen to use the operating system on its phone.

BBC News article

The Nokia N8 will ship in the third quarter of this year, 2010. Hopefully the improved software will bring advantages both for its end-users, and the software ‘app’ and web application developers.

Will Apple’s release of the iPad slow the surge past few years of mobile web development? Some people think so.

The release of Apple’s ever popular smartphone, the iPhone, back in mid 2007 caused a huge development spike in websites and dynamic web applications designed the mobile devices. Of course, the vast majority of these mobile website were developed specifically with the iPhone in mind, however the results were beneficial to pretty much all smartphones with the capability the browse the web and with some form of web browser application.

So, why do I think the iPad will slow this development in the mobile web market? The iPad is a mobile device itself is it not?

Well, perhaps not. Apple’s iPad does indeed use an operating system very similar to the iPhone, with backwards compatibility with almost all of the iPhone’s downloadable apps, and yes, it is mobile in the true sense of the word – it can be easily carried around unlike a full desktop computer and much more easily than a typically larger and much heavier laptop. However, the one aspect of the iPad which stands out is its native screen resolution of 1024×768. This means that, since most web developers design, template and style their websites for resolutions of either 800×600 or 1024×768, normal websites look fantastic on the iPad.

Why build an iPad specific ‘mobile’ version of a website when your existing site works perfectly, fills the screen and looks fantastic?

A lot of web developers will find no need to. However, sites that use heavy amounts of Flash content may be required to rethink their design and implementation strategy when it comes to Flash websites on Apple products. This is because the neither the iPhone or the iPad, at time of writing, support Flash in websites and so rely more so on the ever increasing use of interactive JavaScript elements via programming technologies such as AJAX.

If you’re interested in getting a design done for Apple products, be it the iPhone, iPad or just any Macintosh system, take a look at our website’s web design section. Hopefully it will spike your interest.

In a move that should help with mobile web design and development for Nokia’s mobile devices, the Symbian operating system which powers these devices has been made open source.

Nokia is releasing their Symbian operating system, which includes the Symbian web browser, under an open source license. Symbian is the most popular smartphone operating system, and its total code base is valued at “billions of dollars”. The open sourcing of Symbian hopes to allow for a greater adoption of the operating system and a method by which to increase the evolution and innovations of the various features of Symbian OS, the Symbian web browser and all its integrated components.

From a web developer’s point of view, the open sourcing of mobile web browsers is fantastic. Open sourcing the mobile web browser in Nokia phones will enable it to be made to comply more accurately with web standards and can allow for increased performance and functionality, which may not be possible or financial viable in a closed-sourced proprietary licensing model.

More information regarding the Nokia OS moving to an open source software model can be found on the BBC website.

If you are interested in web design and development for mobile devices, feel free to browse our web design section or get it touch.