Everyone has a first time. It’s a special moment, one where we enter a world of unknown and uncertainty, fumbling around and finding enjoyment in the discovery.

I’m talking about the first time we design a mobile site. Obviously. Ahem.

So since everyone’s got to start somewhere, here are some choice resources for anyone new to creating for the mobile web. It’s one thing to create a design and hack some code together, but don’t forget the importance of testing and promoting what you create!

Designing

• Sitepoint’s Brian Suda writes about the basics of designing for mobile, starting with thinking about screen size and why these people are coming to your site.
• Sender 11 is an extremely useful blog on mobile interaction, filled with great posts and tips on designing for mobile
• Oriented towards the iPhone, A List Apart suggests ways to exploit the unavoidable device with Mobile Safari and beyond.
• For those of us who still occasionally crack a book open, Cameron Roll’s Mobile Web Design comes highly recommended.
• Even further, if you enjoy social interaction, you might like to take part in a MobileCamp, which is an opportunity to get together with people who work in or love the mobile world. It’s a great place to swap ideas, find new development partners or just check out what everyone else is up to.

Developing

• ThinkVitamin: Coding for the Mobile Web gives tips and tricks to help tackle mobile-specific issues.
• W3C Mobile Web Initiative provides information on mobile development standards.
• Considering mobile billing? Why not let experts like Bango take that challenge head on?
• DotMobi and Blue Flavor produced a Mobile Web Developer’s Guide last year to give a boost to both new and experienced mobile developers. I hear a revised version is on its way, but until then, last year’s edition is still helpful.
• If all else fails, adapt your desktop site using Mowser and let somebody else do the hard work.

Testing

• Ready.mobi: Score your mobile-readiness with this useful tool provided by dotMobi
• DeviceAnywhere is the de facto commercial testing tool, allowing you to test mobile sites on a wide range of networks and devices.
• Tarek Esber wrote a great post about mobile device testing services and products, ranging from non-profit services to manufacturers’ own developer portals and other options like emulators and outsourcing.
• Forum Nokia Launchpad is a cheaper alternative to the Forum Nokia Pro program, for those who are developing mobile applications.
• Only available to the American market is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk which can be used to outsource testing. Your mileage will most likely vary, depending on the complexity of the testing you require.

Promoting

• AdMob is the largest mobile advertising network out there. Useful if you’re looking to either publish ads on your site for some revenue, or if you want to advertise on other sites.
• Wapreview is not only an excellent blog by Dennis Bournique, but also an index of useful mobile sites, all rated out of 5 for content and usability.
• Twitterfeed allows you to automatically share your blog entries to your Twitter feed. Why not create a feed of mobile-friendly content for those mates of yours who mainly use Twitter from their phone? They’ll love you for it!
• AdSense for Mobile Content: Google’s widely used ad network is also available on mobile. Like AdMob, you can sign up as advertiser or publisher to meet your promo goals.
• Got a great mobile site? If we’re not already including it in the Taptu search engine index, it may not be on our radar yet. Email me on vero@taptu.com and we’ll visit your site when we next let the crawlers loose.

Got some resources you want to share?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Tips and tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.