Two weeks ago, I was in Toronto for the last day of Web Unleashed from FITC. I was giving a talk on how to build web mobile app that don’t suck. It turns out that those tricks were good for all web applications, but my primary target was to help mobile developers create better applications. I thought a long time about how to approach the topic, and which content I would share with the audience in a short forty-five minutes talk. Since part of my role at Mozilla is to help developers to be successful with Firefox OS, and I saw many struggling with the market as the devices, it was a good start for my content. The emerging markets don’t have the same internet connection speed as us, and this usually cost a lot more. Firefox OS devices, even if amazing, are still low entry level devices (just check the CloudFX – 33$ in India): it mean lower hardware than we used to as mobile developers. For me, it was all about getting back to basic: give a great experience to users, no matter where they are or which platform they use.
So during my presentation, I introduced the concept of mobile first, and responsive web design. I also shared a couple of tips, and tricks on how to optimize your application by thinking about speeding up the loading time, saving on the data transfer, getting better performance, and more.
I’m quite happy with the result as I even got congratulations from the organizers from being in the top rated speakers at the event: it’s always nice to get praise for your work. Despite the good feedbacks, I still feel it’s only the beginning! There is a lot more that we, developers, can do to optimize our mobile web applications, and give a better experience to our users…
