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Designing for Opera Mini

First order of the day is to welcome Robert Nyman back to the blogging scene after his break. I like his statement “My name is Robert and I’m an Internet Junkie”. That is going on my psychological wall along with favourites from the Web like “all your base are mine” and “the Internet is not a truck”. Sincerely, my name is Steven and I’m probably an Internet Junkie too. I am also not a truck.

Robert has posted a short comment which caught my eye about Opera Mini 4 Beta. In it he points to an awesome article over on Opera Developer Community about designing for Opera Mini 4 which is definately a must read and has some resources at the end which should help you further.

Its important when you’re working in web design / development to realise that mobile is becoming a more important medium and to begin your projects with some appreciation of what impact (or lack of impact) you are aiming to achieve in that space. My view is ignoring the mobile platform due to some fixated idea the desktop paradigm is transfixed for all eternity is an osterich approach to business - even if you hear it from government advisors to small business!

How many times have people stood in front of me angrily shouting that people won’t EVER use their mobile phones or personal digital assistants for web browsing? I’ve lost count. It somehow reminds me of the “blind people don’t use the Internet” statement which still comes to the fore at surprisingly common intervals. Accept it everyone - technology changes and so do the way we use it! The mobile browser is now a player and it is building momentum every year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 5:09 am and is filed under accessibility, mobile, usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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6 Responses to “Designing for Opera Mini”

  1. Robert Nyman

    September 3rd, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    Thank you Steven! Also, I’m glad anyone enjoyed the Opera Mini piece, it felt way too short, it gladdens me that it was of any use whatsoever! :-)

  2. Matt Robin

    September 3rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Should be on a T-Shirt shouldn’t it: ‘I am an Internet Junkie’ ???! Hehehe

    It’s good to see Robert back to writing on his site again (another groovy, Swedish Web Developer guy who writes interesting stuff - great!) It’s interesting that you lead to the article about ‘designing for Opera Mini 4′ and, more broadly, for the Mobile Web itself…Web Designers really do need to keep up to date on that side of things…because when the Mobile Web gets used more - it will be huge!

    I’m shouting it too - to anyone who listens! :D

  3. steven

    September 4th, 2007 at 2:52 am

    The interesting part about 3G and later 4G technologies is we aren’t too far away from the position where we’ll have more bandwidth on a mobile than what we have on the desktop now. Plus Moore’s Law and throw in a couple of killer apps and it will tip more. But its inevitable.

    Not only that but its already a market with people tapping on the virtual front door so you have the usability / accessibility issue. Its not just enough to just design solely for the 800+ pixel group anymore, there are growing numbers of people who might want to order theatre tickets or look at your designs on PDA or mobile or god knows what other dimension screen.

    A good example from our business - manager somewhere with PDA is looking for a designer. What if our site goes to crap on a PDA screen? Will we get the business? Regardless of the user size at present people could be throwing away sales by ignoring them.

    Its just funny how some people will play osterich and pretend like nothing will ever change. The Internet as we know it is a 30+ year old technology using outdated protocols to do something it actually wasn’t thought to do at its inception. Kind of funny really. So eventually constraints change, including the way we access it.

    Yeh great to see Robert back on board :) and already canned a slogan! Cool.

  4. steven

    September 4th, 2007 at 3:23 am

    Robert, glad to see you’re back on the Web. I’m a regular reader and occasional commenter over there.

    I’m also particularly interested in mobile and how it will affect what we do - particularly in the next few years.

    Thanks again for the slogan :)

  5. Robert Nyman

    September 5th, 2007 at 12:41 am

    Well, I guess we’re bound to produce some kind of t-shirt sooner or later now… :-)

  6. steven

    September 5th, 2007 at 3:26 am

    and i can see an “I am an Internet Junkie” YouTube movie as well as spin off paraphenalia… do you think Jason Santa Maria will play you in the movie? :)

    I wonder if there isn’t already a tshirt like that out there… mmm.

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