Presentations by: Jason Michel, Kwabena Sekyere, Dave McLaughlin

Concrete examples and demos on mobile designs. Great follow-up to Jeff’s overview of the trends in designing mobile web and native apps.

Dave McLaughlin Presentation: Hartford County Public Library
Used a JavaScript framework for designing web apps and mobile WebKit devices–nice because works on a lot of platforms. jQuery is a JavaScript framework, just released alpha release for jQuery Mobile. jQTouch= offshoot of jQuery. It has been around for about a year, has example code, no clear development timeline, etc.

HCPL mobile: has a new releases and booklists feature in their web app. Very nice looking web app. Need to have functionality to renew materials via the mobile web app–working on this in the near future.

Jason Michel and Kwabena Sekyere: Presentation on Miami University Libraries Mobile Site
Created a mobile web over native apps because more people can use and you don’t have to design for each different device. Used Drupal for the mobile site and designed for core functionalities. Nice, functional mobile website. Unfortunately server doesn’t recognize that you are coming to the site on a mobile site and will load the regular site on your phone. You have to actually type in the mobile website URL to get to the mobile site.

Summary
Another set of talks that reiterate the need to seriously focus on creating mobile web apps/mobile websites instead of native apps. Great talks, but would have been so much better if the projection system was better so even the bloggers in the back of the room could see the code on the screen. (But, of course, this isn’t the fault of the presenters–they had good demos/examples)