The RSPB required a web application through which they could provide learning material to people interested in birds and birdwatching. Once a user has logged-in they are presented with 6 different modules as well as access to the resource library which contains the RPSB Handbook of British Birds and Where to Watch Birds - Britain.
Today I built my first mobile web app. In fact I can’t take full credit for it as Dave coded the core functionality and I scripted the interface. It’s only something small; a simple two page web app that let’s you upload files and browse through and view the uploaded files.
It was built more as a proof of concept and to gauge how difficult it is to build web apps for the mobile platform. We both managed to build the app in an afternoon and tested it out on a HTML browser-enabled T-Mobile Vario 2. We were happy with the end result and both pleasantly suprised at how quick the development was of the app. Granted it wasn’t the most technical of implementations, but developing for the mobile platform was something new to the both of us.
Something else that suprised me is the speed of 3G. I have never had chance to use a 3G connection as my mobile phone is still stuck in the old GPRS-days. The web app didn’t contain many graphical elements and so the general page size was only a couple of kilobytes but the time taken to upload 2Mb images over 3G was a lot quicker than I anticipated.
I think mobile web apps are the way forward as more people are getting out and about and working away from their desks. The likes of Facebook and Flickr have already begun to embrace the change in browsing environment. I attempted to write this post fully through a T-Mobile Vario 2 however Wordpress isn’t optimised for a 320×240 display.
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One Response to “My First Mobile Web App”
It was a fun little project - it’ll be really cool to see the page on Wednesday morning after Gareth finishes his workshop.
What he plans to do is to get a group of 30-50 attendees experienced with mobile devices by allowing them to play with them, take photos and share them, collaboratively, using the mediashare application that we made.
A real “social networking” workshop to reinforce the social networking theme of the ALT-C 2007 conference.
Exciting stuff!
by Dave Waller on September 3rd, 2007 at 4:36 pm