Over the last ten months or so I have been developing and deploying content and applications almost exclusively for use on mobile devices. The work has been familiar, interesting, challenging, frustrating and infuriating in pretty much equal measure. The more frustration I have encountered the more I have tried to investigate, study and learn about the technologies, practices and processes that accompany mobile internet development.

While I was searching for information on delivering my own blog content to mobile devices, I came across Cameron Moll's website and eBook on Mobile Web Design. I downloaded and read the free preview chapters and they gave a great indication of the quality of the content the full eBook would offer. As a result, a short time later I purchased the full eBook, the first eBook I have purchased in fact. I would say that fact alone goes some way to recommending Mobile Web Design.

Mobile Web Design is a relatively short eBook - the PDF only has 104 A4 pages. Included in this figure are the graphical cover page, content pages, an author biography and quite a few images throughout the book. The eBook is presented in a good sized serif font and there are clear stylistic differences between standard copy, quotes, code, foot notes, image annotations and key content points. The recently updated version includes live links to external sources and also a live contents page as well as updates to the content.

There is a consistent and comfortable tone and pace to Mobile Web Design. In reading I never felt a subject was overly technical. Cameron provides a light hearted approach to his writing that offered a leading and encouraging voice that managed to keep my attention on what is to be honest a fairly dry subject matter.

Cameron has provided huge volumes of information and has done a fantastic job in linking to external sources that provide corroborating and alternative view points to the topics Cameron discusses, Many are also foot noted throughout the book. This approach may result in hours of further research to those of a more studious or inquisitive nature, but certainly shows that the author has done enough cross referencing of information and sources to give an informed and knowledgeable opinion.

Cameron has done a great job of covering a little of everything you would want or expect in a book on Mobile Web Design. The book is split into an early section that provides some history of the mobile web, the devices and user levels and also the technologies that have bought it to where it is now. Next is a "fundamentals" section, this is actually a revisiting of some early articles from Cameron's site these are updated in context for the modern mobile web. Next are in depth discussions of XHTML, CSS, testing and validation. Finally are sections covering "other" technologies, how to promote your work and then the book closes with an upbeat call to action for the reader to get going already. The content is obviously based on Cameron's personal research, experience and experimentation or well chosen case studies of relevant applications, services and websites. As I say Cameron is obviously very experience, and does a wonderful job of transferring the knowledge presented to the reader.

Most of the book is focused on XHTML and CSS. FlashLite, JavaMe and SVG all get lumped together in the "Beyond XHTML" chapter with a number of other technologies, services and general mobile telephony applications. This was a disappointment as none of these other technologies really get given the same treatment or time as XHTML and CSS and the chapter ends up feeling a real mishmash of information. Maybe Cameron has avoided these technologies due to lack of experience or perhaps he would benefit working with co-authors to collaborate and extend the depth covered on these other technologies? What ever the reason, the result is Mobile Web Design does come across as rather biased towards XHTML based web browsing on devices, rather than the true mobilisation of applications, services and web presences that Cameron espouses early in the book.

At points Cameron dips his toe into some key development tips and tricks, but very few detailed code examples, one notable exception is dealing with user agent detection. I never felt this lack of depth was a real issue while reading the book on my computer, external resource are so well identified and on a computer easy to follow up there and then online.

Cameron has now announced a print copy of the book, at the same time he has provided a free update to the PDF version. The update includes information on more modern devices, iPhone is given some page space in a number of areas for example ( not so for my beloved Nokia N95 ). I do fear however that the print version of the book may start being out of date almost as soon it comes off the presses.

I would say Mobile Web Design is a little light on application code, and slightly biased towards mobile XHTML browsing as a mobile web solution. These points aside I would highly recommend Mobile Web Design eBook by Cameron Moll for anyone planning to investigate mobile wed and application development and are not sure where to start, or indeed why they should bother. It offers a wealth of well presented, quality information.

• iPhone Reference Library
  Access documentation, guides, and release notes on developing web applications and content for iPhone.
• Web Development Guidelines
  Get the latest development techniques on mobile browser-based user experience design and development.
• Sample Code
  Learn techniques for interactive and standards-based design on iPhone
• iPhone Tech Talk Videos
  Hear from iPhone experts on interface design and processes in optimizing web applications and content.
• Safari Compatibility
  Download Safari 3 Public Beta and design your web application to create the optimal iPhone user experience
• Web App Submission
  Once your app is ready, submit it for possible listing in the Apple web apps library.

Find out more at the iPhone Dev Center.

The first step was pretty easy. Taking this blog mobile. Because Blog.bittube.com is published using the WordPress the first thing I did was to look for a plug in. I only found one. which rather surprised me. You can get it here.

WordPress Mobile Edition

I am no PHP master (neophyte even), but what this seems to do is to re-theme the site in a more Mobile Friendly manner. Removing all the gloss and leaving a rather inelegant simple text list version. As a result of this I began to hack around at some thing that might be a little kinder on the eyes, while still working on more limited devices. This is still very much a work in progress but I hope to find time to continue these experiments to a more complete result.

mobile.bittube.com/blog

Is the first attempt at providing a mobile and device specific theme and presentation for my blog. The theme is very closely based on the PlainText theme, All I have done so far is to any 'extra' blog decorations in an attempt to learn more about CSS and XHTML,my how HTML has changed since I trotted off in my new fangled FutureWave Splash spurs all those year ago .

To finish this post Here are a set of links that I have dug up and Found useful as I have begun investigating development for mobile and devices further.

• Instructions on how to find the MAC address of your N95
• W3C.org Mobile CSS Profile
• Nokia Mobile Internet Tool Kit
• JavaScript Screen Resolution Detection, and redirection
• Fire Fox User Agent Switcher*
• General Mobile Device User Agent Information

* I have been using fire fox to test some content in lieu of my N95, its just quicker and easier than testing on device ALL the time. In order to do this, I have simply used the User Agent Name of Nokia, this seems to be sufficient for testing. However if you need the full user agent string for the Nokia N95 then the consensus seems to be:

Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaN95/10.0.010; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 )
AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413

A break down of an example of this user agent string can be found over at allaboutsymbian.com the breat down is at the bottom of the page in the 'Flash and User agents' section.