separate the content technology display or delivery technology

Transcription

1 Good Morning. In the mobile development space, discussions are often focused on whose winning the mobile technology wars how Android has the greater share of the mobile market or how Apple is has the greatest revenue share or how the latest offering from Windows or Blackberry is going to be a game changer yeah, right For this session though, the case studies presented by my colleagues are not about whose winning but instead about the factors that led them to the decisions they made about what mobile technology was right for the product. It s about identifying the right technology, with the right benefits, to offer the right experience for their users. In order to get us started, I m going to take you through about a 15- minute primer to introduce and define some of the technologies, so we re all talking the same language before my colleagues offer their insights into what drove their mobile app development decisions. In talking about mobile technology, it is important to separate the content technology from the display or delivery technology. Now while it is fair to say that the content technology or format employed by most, if not all, of our presenters is based on structured content like XML, but for the end user of their product it was the delivery or display technology that matters most. So while the content management systems and the content formats behind the applications are important, we re going to instead focus on the end user experience and the technologies that have been employed to delivery that experience in a way that was right for each product.

2 So lets begin where the mobile app market essentially got its start - in July of 2008 with the introduction of the Apple itunes App Store. Many others platforms followed suite by launching their own mobile app stores in the hopes of capitalizing on the user- base that was tied to their specific mobile devices the Android Market (now Google Play), Blackberry World, Samsung Apps Store, and even the Nokia App Store. Some of course have been more successful than others and we all know today that Apple and Android dominate the native mobile app space. So what is considered a native app and why have they been so successful to date? It s a device application that is developed exclusively for a specific mobile operating system. So as we say, it s device dependent or more correctly operating system dependent. Rather than using a dedicated browser to access content, the user instead interacts with content that is loaded into a native application on the device. Content may be pre- loaded as with a reference book application or content may periodically downloaded and stored on the device for the user to interact with whether they are online or offline. Besides stored content, additional content can be

3 streamed to the device, pulled from RSS feeds, or accessed through an in- app web browser which gives the user the illusion of still working in the native app when they ve actually been linked to content outside the app. As a result, a programmer can develop an app that performs a wide range of functions, many of which can take advantage of the processing power of the device itself and take advantage of specific device capabilities like the camera, the GPS, and the accelerometer. The end result typically has been a more robust and custom user experience than can be gotten by simply interacting with the content via the browser. A big part of their success is the platform they are tied to, and this is where apps on the ios and the Android platform have dominated. The sheer volume of users on those two platforms alone means that any developer can create an app that will have a potentially large audience of possible buyers/users and the clear and dedicated distribution channel the apps store themselves make finding the apps both easy and convenient. Of course the success of any app is mostly tied to the user experience and the functionality and performance of the app itself. But the platform the apps are tied to and the process of developing and deploying apps has both its advantages and disadvantages.

4 Not all of your users will be on one of the two major operating systems and developing native apps for specific platforms means deciding to limit the access to your audience. However, with Apple and Android carrying 95% of the market share for mobile devices, it s a choice many developers have made and a risk/reward scenario that is easy to evaluate. The app development, deployment, and ongoing maintenance process can bring challenges. Building native apps means custom building apps for both platforms and from the first release of the app to each subsequent minor or major update the apps need to be submitted to the store for review, approval, and release. This can mean weeks before approval and an initial release on the ios platform and usually several days to a week or more for subsequent updates. While the Google Play store is faster in its approval and release process, these built in approval stages constantly add time to the release cycle and can be a huge challenge when, say, your trying to push out a fast update to address a critical bug or get an app released prior to an annual meeting. And we cannot talk about the pros and cons of native apps without mentioning the revenue share model with the app stores. The upside is that the app store gives you access to a wide audience of users, the downside is the 30% of any revenue that is generated from the sale of the app or in- app purchases will go to the store. However, at least for most subscription- based journals, the app is free and access to the content is controlled by the subscription authentication and not by fees paid to the app store. Even with this scenario though, you can t even have a pop- up served to a user telling them that there subscription is about to expire and then redirect them to your ecommerce website where they can renew their subscription. Doing so will effectively be seen as facilitating and in- app purchase and the stores would expect their 30%.

5 The next display technology, mobile optimized websites, has its roots of course in the traditional website based on HTML display and layering on technologies like Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS), to add formatting and design to a basic HTML markup, and JavaScript to add features and functionality to the presentation. So what is a mobile optimized website? Well, it is essentially a modified version of the cascading styles sheets (CSS) that are typically used to display the exact same HTML content on a smaller form factor device. In designing the display for the optimized site, elements are sized and laid out differently to accommodate the smaller form factor. Not all of the same features exist on the mobile optimized site and some features are rearranged and sized in such a way that the user experience is more appropriate for the device size. So that elements that you might traditionally interact with a mouse pointer, instead, are designed for optimal tap targets. So mobile optimized websites are really about the small form factor devices like smart phones and smaller tablets. Larger size tablets, like the standard ipad and many others, don t utilize the mobile optimized site and are simply served the standard website. So how do they work? Well, note the differences in the web addresses above. The sites are designed to detect the operating system and device of the incoming user and will automatically (at least in most cases) offer the end user the site that is more appropriate for the device. And when it serves the mobile optimized site you ll often get a slightly different URL often with the word mobile. or m. preceding the traditional URL.

6 Its important to note that while a mobile optimized site is more appropriate for the small form factor device, like a smart phone, the reality is that the result is the need to maintain two distinctly different sets styles sheets. Although the two sites may utilize the same HTML content, they maintain two separate sets of style sheets and associated JavaScript files. The upside of a mobile optimized website is that all mobile users can access your content, regardless of what platform their device is running on. As long as they have a browser, they can get to your content. These sites are platform independent or are meant to be. While using a browser- based content delivery system offers the promise of maintaining only one set of code, and no need to go through approval and release process, the reality is that with the range of different browsers on the market and the various versions, you still need to do some customization or work to get your site or mobile optimized site to behave the same on most browsers. But that s basically true about all web development. Following closely behind mobile optimized websites and often overlapping in their definition are Web Apps. In their most basic sense they are a mobile optimized website that has been designed in such a way that the end users experience more closely simulates the look, feel, and behavior of a native app. While it is still essentially a web site, the user can use a simple bookmarking capability to drop an app icon on the home screen of their mobile device and further simulate the experience of launching the app. Now while that icon may look like others on their device, it s not going to show a badge when new content is available for the user since push notification or badging is a feature, for now, only of the native apps. For some web apps, once in the application the user is often aware of the fact that they are in a web browser by the common toolbar along the top and the regular accessing of data through the internet to load new pages but with newer technologies if the user launches the web app from the home screen icon, they ll get a full screen app experience that feels even more like a native app.

7 Of course, one of the first and most well- known web apps is the Financial Times app. In order to avoid the 30% revenue share with Apple, they developed one of the early web apps that leveraged offline caching of content and have continued to enhance the app over time. As I mentioned, several new technologies or updates to existing technologies are changing the landscape for web applications. Among them are new releases of HTML and CSS HTML5 and CSS3. Although the official specification for HTML5 is not yet completed, many of the capabilities of HTML5 are being used by developers today and the browser providers are quickly releasing new versions that support many of the features of HTML5 that will make the web app experience more and more compelling. Among those features are the ability to cache content offline, native support for SVG or scalable vector graphics, native support for MathML rendering, native support for multi- media like video and audio without the need for a 3 rd party player that needs to be loaded in the browser. In addition, HTML5 brings greater design flexibility to the presentation and some may say it brings typography to the web with the ability to flow and style content in ways we ve only been accustomed to in desktop publishing and typesetting systems. So while the traditional mobile optimized website or web app still had a significant performance and feature gap with native apps, HTML5 and CSS3 will narrow that gaps significantly. Coupled with platform independence and the ability to manage the distribution of content without the dedicated sales channels the app stores the web app experience will continue to improve and level the playing field between native app capabilities and those of web apps.

8 Lastly, a little about a new technology called Responsive Web Design. As noted earlier, one of the challenges with developing mobile optimized sites or web apps is that they required a different set of cascading style sheets in order to serve the alternate site. And with the plethora of different device sizes now available from a variety of manufacturers, trying to build a mobile optimized site at one size meant that many of the devices were going to get a sub- optimal presentation when viewing your site. Responsive web design works to address exactly that problem. Utilizing HTML, CSS, Media Queries, and fluid grids a properly developed responsive design website will dynamically change the presentation of content as the device size changes. The upside, besides a truly optimized presentation for the end user s device, is that the code work is all done from a single set of code no separate CSS for the mobile site versus the traditional site. Thus making the ongoing maintenance, design, development, and deployment all easier while at the same time delivering a better UI/UX for the end user.

9 So with that introduction to a number of the key technologies that will be referenced by my colleagues, I ll pass the baton to Rob O Donnell.