{"id":914,"date":"2013-02-07T18:14:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T18:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cookandkaye.com\/projects\/?p=914"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:24:06","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T18:24:06","slug":"websites-for-smart-phones-take-centre-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookandkaye.com\/projects\/websites-for-smart-phones-take-centre-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Websites for smart phones take centre stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Your<\/p>\n

Since the start of the world wide web there has been a problem that the devices your visitor uses to view your website can be very different in their basic capacity for displaying your site. Over the last ten years this problem reduced, as visitors adopted a fairly standard ‘web-enabled-device’ configuration consisting of a desktop computer, with a ‘modern’ browser, and a screen of about 1200x800px in dimensions.<\/p>\n

Over the last five years, however, this situation has started to change again with the growing popularity of mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones:<\/p>\n

Global internet usage through mobile devices, not including tablets*, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year according to free web analytics company StatCounter<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While the stats above indicate that we need to start paying attention to these small-screen devices, the actual numbers of mobile browsers out in the wild is probably greater than that of our traditional desktop driving visitor \u2013 but browsing the web on a phone is, lets face it, painful.<\/p>\n

HTML5 to the rescue?<\/h3>\n

The widespread adoption of HTML5 \u2013 which is not a recognised standard \u2013 is in part because it allows web-designers to adapt their designs for smaller screens, to smoothly simplify their sites, so that it works on a smart phone.<\/p>\n

This approach is not without problems<\/strong> \u2013 the main smart-phone vendors are well aware that to be any use their browser must do a reasonable job of a ‘traditional’ website, allowing visitors using their smart phone full access to the web. <\/p>\n

Often web designers actually make their sites worse by hacking out bits to simplify the site. This is particularly true if we try and adapt our sites for tablets \u2013 our philosophy (CookandKaye) is that these have large enough screens to manage all but the most bloated web layout, so generally we would leave well alone! (This is also cheaper for you!)<\/em><\/p>\n

WordPress 2012 theme \u2013 the web on its head<\/h3>\n

We use WordPress themes very extensively*<\/a> \u2013 with a small amount of customisation they offer a solid entry-level website for many of our clients. We therefore follow the latest theme developments with a great deal of interest. Over the last couple of years WordPress templates have attempted, with moderate success, to scale their layout to the smaller screen. <\/p>\n

The latest template, however, changes everything by designing for the small screen, and then ‘going large’ for desktop and tablet displays.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n