Mobile Web Development - Nirav Mehta, Packt Publishing, 2008

This is the next book from the Packt Publishing that has attracted me. Its annotation
promises „a complete, practical guide to writing mobile websites and
applications.“ The book is written for developers and webdesigners. It briefs
the main differences between a classic web application and a mobile web application.
The author explains how to prepare mobile-friendly pages, how to make and modify
thew contents for different mobile devices, how to lower an amount of data or
how to create a server application with a mobile front-end. The book also
describes the other methods of integration between web applications and mobile
technology: sending and receiving SMS/MMS, receiving of mobile payments or
solutions for voice services. It illustrates every of these aspects on a
practical example (the pizza delivery service).

There are many issues and restrictions in the mobile development and the book
begins with a description of these problems. From the very clear things, like
„mobiles have worse displays and keyboards than computers“, to the things such as
„different way of work with mobile app“.

In the second chapter the book describes basic methods for creating mobile
webpages, from the „Let-the-mobile-deal-with-it“ way through using mobile CSS for
creating specialized mobile webpages. It illustrates the basics of the
XHTML MP and provides some usefull tips for „mobile devices simulators“.

The third chapter is about the mobile pages design, not only graphical but
software design too. It covers some techniques useful during the design time
(i.e. server-side sessions or login algorithms). Everything is
illustrated on the sample codes, written in the PHP. The chapter four continues
in this theme with the Pages Adaptation, using techniques such as LCD (the
Lowest Common Denominator) or WALL (the Wireless Abstraction Library). It
notices other tools for adaptation too, i.e. WURFL, W3C DIAL or the HAWHAW. The
chapter five closes the mobile webpages theme and summarizes the information
about the standards and the best practices for the .mobi pages development.

The sixth chapter covers the methods of SMS sending, using web service
Clickatell, also illustrated on practical PHP source codes. The methods of
sending and receiving MMS are described in the chapter seven. The author begins with
the MMS message structure, explains the very basics of the SMIL and then shows
a real example of SMS sending/receiving based on the Clickatell service.

The chapter eight is important for people interested in the mobile payment.
Forget the Premium SMS, because there are other methods for mobile payments too:
mobile credit card payments, payment gateways or mobile PayPal payments. The
last mentioned, PayPal payments, are covered verbosely in this chapter (with a
PHP example, of course). The author also mentions the mobile payments security and the
so-call short codes in the chapter eight.

The next chapter describes the issues and techniques for providing the voice
service automat.

The chapter ten outlines the possibilities of the mobile AJAX, which could be
interesting very soon, as well as the mobile devices’ capabilities growth. This
chapter contains examples of AJAX mobile webpages, a capability list of
individual phone types and simple applications for the iPhone.

The last chapter is, maybe a little bit provocatively, named „Mobile Web 3.0“.
The author talks about things such as mobile widgets, OCC (Occasionally Connected
Computing) or the Android SDK in this chapter. These things are not „in“ just
now, but they will be, soon! So it’s good to know about them right now.

Resume: This book is, as well as other Packt books, full of information, but
not too deep. Some of them is just suggested, letting the reader find the details
himself, if he is interested. In this book you find the outline of the mobile
web applications development world, some principles for self-study, some useful
hints and examples and - last but not least - the inspiration. I would recommend this
book to every developer interested in the mobile web.

You can order this book online on the Packt web