Think optimizing for mobile web isn’t important? Think again! This was reported by PCWorld:
Tablet computers will eventually replace laptops, according to nearly half of Americans polled earlier this month.
But don’t panic yet …
Of course, “eventually” is a very long time, and the recent rollout of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and anticipation over the Apple iPad 3 might have survey takers overreaching a bit.
While the Poll Position phone survey of 1,155 registered voters found great enthusiasm for tablet computers, with 46% saying tablets would surpass laptops eventually, 35% said tablets will not replace laptops and 19% had no opinion.
Among younger Americans (18-29 age group), 49% said tablets will not replace the PC and 37% said they will. A higher percentage of men (53%) than women (39%) foresee tablets overtaking laptops.
The tablet market was hot last year and is expected to remain so this year. IDC recently said it expected 2011 worldwide tablet shipments to total more than 63 million units, with Apple selling about 6 in 10 of those. Recent Canalys figures show a total PC market of 356 million units in 2011, minus tablets.
One of the biggest fears of companies developing new software or app or launching a new website is that some fundamental bug will slip through the testing cracks and only rear its ugly head post-launch.
That fear is compounded these days now that review sites and social media make it effortless for dissatisfied customers to voice their grievances not only to their friends, co-workers and next store neighbors, but to all the friends, co-workers, next store neighbors they’ve ever known. Plus a slue of strangers they don’t actually know.
Now, in addition to written complaints and bad reviews, the general public can share images of software bugs. Check out this story on TechCrunch about a guy who posted images of Facebook bugs on Pinterest (think of his board as flypaper for Facebook bugs):
Former Facebook engineer (and current Phabricator creator) Evan Priestley has taken the opposite route; In the spirit of coding excellence, Priestly has created a Pinterest log of over 30 Facebook bugs he’s tracked since September 2011. It’s really impressive.
I can’t say testing was ever easy but there definitely was a time when there were far fewer components to the testing matrix. Now a days, if you’re just trying to put together a simple website there’s a whole range of browsers to consider at the very least – not to mention the ever updating versions of those browsers.
If that wasn’t enough, now you have to make sure that website works on the miniature screens of mobile devices (which themselves offer a whole gamut of sizes). And I’m not taking “should work” or something to consider if you want to be hip and trendy … because it’s not a trend, trends go away. Instead, time spent browsing the web on mobile devices is steadily increasing. Here’s the most recent statistic from Net Applications (which has been monitoring web usage across their 40,000 websites since 2004), as reported by CNet:
If you haven’t whipped your Web site into shape for easy viewing on small-screen devices, you’d better get cracking.
That’s because the use of mobile devices reached an all-time high in December, accounting for 7.7 percent of browser usage according to Net Applications’ measurements of daily visits to its network of 40,000 Web sites. That may still be a small fraction of total Web traffic, but it’s a large and growing population in absolute numbers.
Earlier in December Rafe Needleman, a writer at CNet, began posting daily gems of advice called “Startup Secrets.” They are short and sweet and include a memorable quote from a variety of people. So far, we’re up to 12 secrets. While they’re all good, I wanted to highlight a few particularly pertinent to software and mobile development and testing.
So, today’s puzzlers are: Who are your users? Where are they? How do they use your product? And how can you make the experience of using your support as close as possible to using the product itself?
“Believe in your f***ing self” –Dave McClure‘s T-Shirt
I love Dave’s shirt, because this is what entrepreneurship is really about. Pushing, pushing, pushing. Pushing your idea, pushing yourself, and pushing through the dismissive and small-minded negativity from people who don’t share your passion.
You thought IE6 would die after Facebook, Google and hundreds of other companies stopped supporting it. You thought IE6 was dead when they held a mock funeral for it in 2010. You thought it would be even more dead (deader?) when just last week, we learned that Microsoft will be automatically upgrading users to the latest version of the web browser. You were wrong. To quote Richard Pryor: I Ain’t Dead Yet, Mother#*%$@!!
And neither is IE6. In the past, we’ve called IE6 the zombie browser that can’t be killed and it’s certainly lived up to that moniker. However, regarding that last piece of news (Microsoft’s upcoming automatic updates) it looks like IE6 may finally get phased out. For real this time. Or maybe not.
The new auto-update feature will only apply to users who’ve opted into the automatic updates through Windows Update. Those that have opted in will be upgraded to the latest version of IE available for their system. If you’re still on Windows XP that means you’ll be updated to IE 8. Vista and Windows 7 users will move to IE 9. The Windows Blog notes that when upgrading, your home page, search provider, and default browser settings will not be affected.
Web developers still supporting IE 6 may not need to do so much longer if Microsoft’s auto-update strategy pays off. Since the new auto-update mechanism will apply to IE 7 as well, it too may not need to be supported much longer. Of course, even in the best case scenario where IE 6 and 7 users drop below 5 percent worldwide, web developers would still need to contend with IE 8. While IE 8 was a huge step up from its predecessors, it still lacks support for most of the HTML5 and CSS 3 features found in modern web browsers.
Somehow, IE6 usage currently stands at 8.4% worldwide. That includes a whopping 27.9% in China. As such, we’re going to hold off on pronouncing IE6 dead for the time being. However, the browser’s days are clearly numbered. Right?
The newest issue of eWeek arrived today wrapped in a white, matte, heavyweight cover “introducing” eWeek Digital. Once I tore my eyes away from the image of the sleek iPad sporting Steve Jobs’ face that took up the middle of the page (I’m an admitted Applephile) I got to the three little paragraphs at the bottom corner of the page. The top one talked about the “same award winning coverage.” The second paragraph dropped this line on subscribers: “Exclusively available on a new digital platform.” The third paragraph drove it home: “There is no time to lose… This could be your last issue!”
eWeek is ceasing publication of its print magazine and will offer only a digital edition. And it’s not alone. Let’s explore this trend of print publications moving to online or digital only editions and who it’s effecting most.
With the explosion of digital readers and tablets we’ve seen many major publications start producing digital versions of their traditional paper offerings. But in the late aughts (2007-2009-ish) we started seeing something new … publications completely abandoning their print versions in favor of a digital-only option. That trend slowed down in 2010 but has come back stronger than ever this year. Here’s a look at the digital-only timeline:
Ho, ho, ho! Whoa there, Blitzen– wasn’t it just Halloween? It sure feels that way. After all, I still have two pounds of trick-or-treat candy to pretend I’m not eating.
Unfortunately, my four-year-old has already implored me to take down the skeleton and spiders hanging in the doorway because they’re going to scare away Santa. So, rather than arguing the salient fact that Santa shimmies down the chimney versus ringing the doorbell, I’ve officially started morphing decor from the marvelous macabre to merry old Saint Nick. Kids: 1. Mom: 0.
Nonetheless, the fact hasn’t escaped me that we’re two weeks away from Cyber Monday (November 28th), an occasion that online retailers have been planning for months. Since summer, global brands and independent e-tailers have been testing and re-testing their mobile apps and web sites for functionality, usability, localization glitches and possible bottlenecks in site performance that could jeopardize their revenue potential.
Moreover, the ante has been upped now that the iPad and other tablets have entered the scene. Online retailers that spent the last few years optimizing their mobile apps and porting them to additional platforms like Android, are now going through the process from scratch with tablets. Not only are the specs non- standardized, varying significantly by manufacturer, device and network performance like smartphones.
Another STPCon presenter we were excited to meet was Noah Sussman. Noah is a test architect at Etsy – a great place to buy and sell handmade goods online. Etsy has built out a phenomenal test and deploy architecture that minimizes extra steps and and works seamlessly for rapid deploys. Noah’s STPCon presentation is about Etsy’s testing approach using this architecture, and we were able to get his summary on video:
Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.
Are you writing a web application? Do you have a global audience? Then you probably care deeply about localizing or internationalizing your application so it works smoothly for all your customers. What you want is to make sure your application as well as your web server stack supports UTF-8.
Fortunately, almost every modern component involved in building a web application supports UTF-8. Unfortunately, getting each individual component to use UTF-8 requires a lot of configuration kicking and screaming. Fortunately, this recent article by Jonathan Rentzsch describes all the steps to getting a typical LAMP stack working with UTF-8, end-to-end.
Jonathan recommends starting with two important tools: a hex editor (so you can see the raw data exactly as it’s stored) and a Unicode test string that can test to see if an article is being stored and shown with correct UTF-8 encodings. For the test string, he proposes (and this is where we see if our config is correct): “Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn” – including the curly quotes.
The rest of his post is fascinating, and includes configuration tips for MySQL, Java, etc. Read the rest here.
Alterian has published a nice infographic of comparing native apps to web apps for mobile phones. While native apps have some distribution and marketing benefits there have been increasing complaints from developers regarding app store policies. (We covered an app store comparison in April.)
Figuring out which path to take is certainly a popular debate and with companies like Facebook rumored to be developing “Spartan”, an HTML5-based web app the debate certainly won’t fade anytime soon.
uTest has detailed white papers covers testing of both topics; testing mobile and web apps.
Due to size constraints, the infographic has been posted below the fold… Read more…
Think optimizing for mobile web isn’t important? Think again! This was reported by PCWorld:
You thought IE6 would die after Facebook, Google and hundreds of other companies stopped supporting it. You thought IE6 was dead when they held
Ho, ho, ho! Whoa there, Blitzen– wasn’t it just Halloween? It sure feels that way. After all, I still have two pounds of trick-or-treat candy to pretend I’m not eating.
Are you writing a web application? Do you have a global audience? Then you probably care deeply about localizing or internationalizing your application so it works smoothly for all your customers. What you want is to make sure your application as well as your web server stack supports UTF-8.
Alterian has published a nice infographic of comparing native apps to web apps for mobile phones. While native apps have some distribution and marketing benefits there have been increasing complaints from developers regarding app store policies. (We covered an 
