by Dylan Tack, Lead Development Architect
Our responsive redesign has been a great improvement for metaltoad.com. I was still not entirely satisfied with the speed of our site, especially while waiting for my train at the busy Pioneer Square! One of the major obstacles for mobile networks is lag, and so I set out to cut down the number of HTTP requests. By improving the site's stylesheets and scripts, I was able to eliminate a dozen extra requests. Read More…
by Aaron Amstutz, Web Developer
I recently helped a friend with a couple bugs they were fixing on a mobile site, and suddenly realized that there is a good basic list of tools that folks should have in their frontend dev kit. Robbie wrote a little while ago about some of the front end (CSS/CSS3) tools he uses, so I thought I'd add to the list, and lean a bit more toward debugging. Read More…
by Erin Seale, Web Developer
The latest version of the jQuery Lazy Load plugin (released Jan 29th, 2012) included the ability to customize your data attribute parameter. This is a pretty helpful update; I realized it could be used to set multiple source images for the same node. Here's how you can use it to optimize images, cutting down on data transfer for mobile devices. Set up your lazy loading the normal way - generally this is gives you HTML like this: Read More…
by Joaquin Lippincott, President & Founder
When it comes to mobile development, I've seen a lot of buzz recently on how CSS3 can help people eliminate images and cut the bandwidth requirement for their websites, however if a good mobile experience is important to you, you may want to think twice before deciding how to retrofit your website. The Good Old Days The Future is Now Your Screensize May Vary Don't Forget the CPU Oldschool Techniques What About Bandwidth? The Need for Speed Read More…
by Joaquin Lippincott, President & Founder
With the latest launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet, the world is now up to more than five major Android hardware providers. Among each of these, there is also a wide variety in the screen sizes, from the smart phones to mid and larger tablets. Outside of the Android market you have the 800 pound gorilla, Apple with their iPhone, iPod & iPad. And you have RIM with the Blackberry and Nokia (who still can't decide what they are going to use). Read More…
by Dylan Tack, Lead Development Architect
You've heard the hype. The mobile web is exploding, and device sales will soon outstrip PCs. Our desktops and laptops will join VCRs and fax machines in the dustbin of history. Yet, mobile usage share is totally flatlined (perhaps even declining slightly). What is going on? Read More…
by Scott Vandehey, Front-End Web Developer
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Responsive Web Design, and in particular about CSS3 Media Queries. When our CEO recently asked me to make our site easier to view on his mobile phone, I jumped at the chance to retrofit our fixed-width layout using these new techniques. In a nutshell, media queries allow you to define alternate styles that are applied to certain screen sizes. The obvious example is to pass a mobile stylesheet to small screens, and your regular stylesheet to large screens. Read More…
by Joaquin Lippincott, President & Founder
Mobile website traffic is up. While this is hardly news, as a small case study I'm posting findings from metaltoad.com (you can see the exact numbers in the tables below). Here's the most important information I gleaned from our mobile analysis: Read More…
by Joaquin Lippincott, President & Founder
If you haven't heard (or applied) be sure to check out the 2011 Knight News Challenge. It's an opportunity to pursue $5 million in funding for your idea that addresses one or more of the following topics as it relates to news... Read More…
by Joaquin Lippincott, President & Founder
For as long as mobile sites have been around the conventional wisdom has been: build your website first and then create a mobile site as an add-on; creating a distilled, streamlined version of the desktop site. This makes sense, no? A few weeks ago I discovered that we've been doing it wrong*. Here's why: Read More…