Page 43 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014browser running on a desktop machine, not just because the screen size is different, but because the visitor’s mindset and context are different. For example, on a website selling books, one consideration is to determine at which point in the sale cycle the user is accessing the site from a mobile device—something that usually happens once or twice, particularly at the start of the purchase process—and offer only the necessary information on the mobile version of the website. In general, mobile‐friendly browsing requires a simpler design than a desktop website, avoiding, for example, the use of scrollbars or making the user enter text.Consequently, the technological problem arising from having to develop applications different from the website for different mobile operating systems must not be confused with what is really intended and what is good for business. The fact that the new responsive design technologies make it possible to resolve this problem by developing a single version of the website that can be seen well on all devices does not necessarily mean that we have to develop the same version of the website for all of them. This is probably not what we want. Mobility is a question of options that implies understanding the cycle of the user, in our case the consumer of cultural products, in order to choose the best option at any given moment.One of the advantages of responsive design is that it makes it possible to optimise the design for several devices without the need to create different versions of the website, and indeed use the same URL, by detecting the device which is being used for access. On the other hand, one of the main drawbacks of using native mobile applications is the need to develop multiple versions of the software to be compatible with the operating system of the device in each case. Today’s trend is towards hybrid applications of which a single version is developed. That is, applications that run on the device but which use the same mobile web technology as the website.AC/EIn 2009 a specialist in mobile technologies calledLuke Wroblewski summarised his ideas on good practice for design for mobiles in an article that created a great impact. The title of the article, which was followed by a book, was “Mobile First”, and the underlying idea, the “call to action”, if you prefer, was the need to simplify designs for mobiles and focus on the important things in view of the limitations of their displays. In the same article he called for the abandonment of desk‐top browser design mentality in order to take best advantage of the featuresthat smart phones of the period offered: localisation, multi‐touch, tactile interface, accelerometer, camera, etc.Adaptive mobility technologies make it possible for a single version of a Web site to be viewed well on all devicesLuke Wroblewski’s ideas made a huge impact, and even though very soon afterwards new Internet browsers began to incorporate many of the features of mobile devices, reducing the distance between them, as a consequence of the popularisation of mobile web technologies in comparison with the mobile applications that Wroblewski had originally called for, the central idea that it is necessary to design for the mobile first still holds sway and is very important, to the point where it is common to speak of “mobile first responsive design”.HTML5 is one of the technologies incorporated into new browsers and has made possible the old technological dream of a single version of a site for all devices. So how does HTML5 differ from HTML4 or HTML3? Firstly, HTML5’s new labels make it possible to do many more elegant, interactive things than the previous versions of the standard. One example is the famous page that emerged as one of the demonstrations of its functionality that reproduces the credits for Star Wars; for example, with HTML5 it is possible to render 3‐D objects.Another difference with respect to earlier versions of the standard are the new semantic labels itWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 4: CULTURE IN THE CLOUD CURRENT PAGE...43