RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
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- 13,157
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- Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
It occurs to me that because designers now have to accommodate devices with widely varying optimal viewport sizes, it might be a good idea to standardize a "t" subdomain in addition to the "m" subdomain for mobile devices.
When the "m" came into use, it assumed a tiny viewport, slow connections, expensive bandwidth, and funky image rendering; so sites that were designed as "mobile" are too stripped down for tablets.
But on the other hand, there are sites that people might very well want to access from their phones, so I think we still need a standard specifically for those devices.
For example, let's consider a hypothetical site for a plumbing or electrical supply company. It would include pictures of the parts they sell to help users identify the parts they need, even if they have no Internet access other than their phones. This might be the case if someone is working on a new home or a vacation home, or if they're a plumber or electrician working in the field who come across a problem and need a part to fix it.
For a site like that, it would make the most sense to have a phone-optimized version that uses, say, medium-quality, centered images that render at viewport width and are zoomable, placed above or below the item description. This way the guy standing in two feet of water in a basement can quickly find the sump pump part that he needs.
On a tablet or desktop, however, the images might look better and be more useful rendered at, say, x% of horizontal viewport size with a max-width of x-px, and floated right, with the descriptive information to the left.
Design aesthetics- and usability-wise, however, the desktop version might want to use more columns, the images might be of higher quality (which would eat up bandwidth for mobile users), they might want to use hover zoom, they might open in a lightbox that doesn't work well or is inconvenient on tablets, etc.
Suffice it to say that there are effects that can be useful to users (or just pretty) that simply won't work on tablets. With minor tweaking of things like navigation menus and such, desktop versions can work well enough on tablet versions. But with a little more tweaking, both versions can quite easily be optimized to their particular experience with just a few minutes of CSS. So why not have a "t" subdomain for tablets?
As a designer, I consider the tablet experience to be a step backward. I really don't understand why anyone likes them. I understand why people use them in certain cases where mobile connectivity is needed or desired, but not why they like them. An outhouse is a fine place to take a dump when I'm camping, but I don't plan to build one behind my house because I have two nicely-equipped bathrooms with running water. That's how I look at tablets. I'll use them if I have to, but I scratch my head wondering why some people actually prefer using them.
Nonetheless, some people do. Still, I don't want to limit my designs to those that will work on a tablet. It's a simple thing to build a second version optimized to a tablet, and a third version optimized for a phone. They all can call the same content, and CSS and PHP can be used to render that content appropriately for the devices.
So I propose that the "t" subdomain be set aside for tablets, and the "m" for phones.
-Rich
When the "m" came into use, it assumed a tiny viewport, slow connections, expensive bandwidth, and funky image rendering; so sites that were designed as "mobile" are too stripped down for tablets.
But on the other hand, there are sites that people might very well want to access from their phones, so I think we still need a standard specifically for those devices.
For example, let's consider a hypothetical site for a plumbing or electrical supply company. It would include pictures of the parts they sell to help users identify the parts they need, even if they have no Internet access other than their phones. This might be the case if someone is working on a new home or a vacation home, or if they're a plumber or electrician working in the field who come across a problem and need a part to fix it.
For a site like that, it would make the most sense to have a phone-optimized version that uses, say, medium-quality, centered images that render at viewport width and are zoomable, placed above or below the item description. This way the guy standing in two feet of water in a basement can quickly find the sump pump part that he needs.
On a tablet or desktop, however, the images might look better and be more useful rendered at, say, x% of horizontal viewport size with a max-width of x-px, and floated right, with the descriptive information to the left.
Design aesthetics- and usability-wise, however, the desktop version might want to use more columns, the images might be of higher quality (which would eat up bandwidth for mobile users), they might want to use hover zoom, they might open in a lightbox that doesn't work well or is inconvenient on tablets, etc.
Suffice it to say that there are effects that can be useful to users (or just pretty) that simply won't work on tablets. With minor tweaking of things like navigation menus and such, desktop versions can work well enough on tablet versions. But with a little more tweaking, both versions can quite easily be optimized to their particular experience with just a few minutes of CSS. So why not have a "t" subdomain for tablets?
As a designer, I consider the tablet experience to be a step backward. I really don't understand why anyone likes them. I understand why people use them in certain cases where mobile connectivity is needed or desired, but not why they like them. An outhouse is a fine place to take a dump when I'm camping, but I don't plan to build one behind my house because I have two nicely-equipped bathrooms with running water. That's how I look at tablets. I'll use them if I have to, but I scratch my head wondering why some people actually prefer using them.
Nonetheless, some people do. Still, I don't want to limit my designs to those that will work on a tablet. It's a simple thing to build a second version optimized to a tablet, and a third version optimized for a phone. They all can call the same content, and CSS and PHP can be used to render that content appropriately for the devices.
So I propose that the "t" subdomain be set aside for tablets, and the "m" for phones.
-Rich
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