Differences between “Regular” and Mobile Web Design

• You will need to know the latest HTML (HTML5) and CSS.  Some references sources are:
  • HTML (HTML5 is the current standard) tags: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/, http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/html_cheatsheet/
  • CSS reference: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/
  • W3C has an HTML tutorial at http://www.w3schools.com/html/
  • W3C also has a CSS tutorial at http://www.w3schools.com/css/
• The W3C has a Mobile Web Best Practices page that anyone interested in mobile web site design should check out.
  • This is an in depth look at what a good mobile design is and covers many points from maintaining a consistent look to maximizing the device potential of the devices that call upon the web site to avoiding tables and frames for layout.
• The difference between the main web and mobile web in terms of design is that the regular web has a few browsers to contend with but pretty much a standard screen size.  The mobile web has innumerable devices with various capabilities and screen sizes. Compared to the desktop mobile web design is the Wild West.
  • There are smart phones, dumb phones, and various degrees of “smart”ness in between found in phones
    • The iPhone, incidentally, is able to present regular whole regular web pages, thanks to it ability to zoom.
  • There are also tablets, not as big as desktops, but much larger than cell phones.
  • Some devices have built-in keyboards, others have touch screen keyboards, while some phones have only a basic number pad.  You should plan for all types
  • Unlike desktops mobile devices often have GPS built in as well as cameras, often more than one.  However, integrating mobile maps with built in GPS depends on the mobile device’s operating system so that means different pages, if not sites for Apple vs. Android vs. dumb phones
  • Mobile devices are less secure that our PCs at home in our private networks with firewalls and other protections.
  • Cell Phones usually have far lesser processor power as well as internet speed. (Most cell phones in the US still operate at 3G speeds which is comparable to modem speed on a PC)
  • PCs usually have access to printers while mobile devices usually do not.
  • PCs have more robust applications like office suites which are usually lacking of mobile phones and such
  • People surfing the web from a cell phone are often looking for fast and quick basic information.  That, coupled with smaller screen size, translates to much more basic sites for mobile sites.
• The mobile web has its own standards.
  • WAP – Wireless Access Protocol, no longer used much started in the late 90’s
  • XHTML superseded most WAP applications
  • HTML5 is the latest language that supports mobile web development

This introductory article is for simpler sites.

Mobile Web Design Hard Facts

• CSS is great but not all devices support it
  • That coupled with all the different devices boils down to requiring not only a different design from that that works well with the desktop but often multiple mobile web sites are required.
    • You can find specifications for mobile devices at DeviceAtlas.com.
  • A lot of desktop web sites incorporate Flash to display media like pictures or movies. However, many mobile devices don’t work with Flash. So, more intricate mobile web site designs will probably requires multiple mobile sites or coded sites that will deliver content based on the user agent requesting the page.  (User agent is a bit of html information that your device sends when requesting a page telling the requested page’s server what kind of device is requesting.)
  • Think Javascript!  Javascript is a standard acceptable on most devices so programming media with Javascript is perhaps the best  alternative.
  • An less labor intensive alternative is to host media on sites like Youtube or Flickr that have services designed to deliver content based on the requesting device’s capabilities
• Media Hosting Sites
  • Flickr
  • Smugmug
  • Picasa
  • PC Magazine has a review of photo sharing sites here.
  • Youtube
  • CNet compares video hosting services here
• Content Dedicated Networks (CDN)
  • Can be costly but enable much more control.
  • Examples are Akamai, Mobile CDN
  • A comparison of 10 CDNs is here
• GPS can be complicated.  Google Maps for mobile has instructions for the different operating systems.

Tools to Create Websites that are Mobile Friendly

There are lots of web creation tools, but not all tools have specific capabilities for mobile web sites.

Dreamweaver is the ultimate tool, but expensive. Their cloud package is more expensive monthly than web hosting for relatively simple sites.

Xara Web Designer is an interesting choice with a one time cost for non-programmers and programmers alike.

Large Web Hosting services like 1and1 Hosting and GoDaddy have wizards that create mobile web sites.  You have to be able to live with the limits of the wizard but this can be a good option for a web site with a professional look.

WordPress and Other CMS Tools

(A CMS is a content management system, a tool for managing websites.  For example WordPress is a CMS and was originally designed for blogs.  However, it is very powerful and there are sites that use it for sites that are not just blogging sites.

WordPress, depending on the theme that you have chosen, may actually scale to the mobile market.  However, if it doesn’t there are plug-ins like Mobile Press, Mobile Detector, Mobile Pack, and Mobile Touch that you can install.  Joomla has available extensions like Mobile Joomla that do server side conversions of your web site to mobile versions.  Drupal has mobile tools for mobile web site development.

Mobile Web Site SEO Suggestions

Use “HandheldFriendly” meta tag to tell requester that your page is designed with mobiles in mind: <meta name=”HandheldFriendly” content=”True” />

Use an online validator to validate your code. A commonly used one is http://validator.w3.org/.

Remember pages are optimized with good descriptive titles, headers, and tags.  Being a good description means being accurate so don’t look like a scammer and a page that promises more than it can deliver, or stuff tags that are beyond what the page is about.

Register your site with mobile search engines.  The big mobile web sites include google.mobi, yahoo.mobi, msn.mobi, aol.mobi, and m.ask.com.

Some Mobile Web Design Suggestions

• Limit page size to about 25k.
  • Use small images
  • You can use img {  max-width: 100%;  } to size images to a container size
• Limit menu and list of links to about 5.
  • I think a vertical list is more practical than a horizontal one as people don’t like to have to scroll but they would rather scroll down than sideways.
• The modern trend is simple graphics with text on them, i.e. flat design.  The Windows 8 look is an example of flat design.  It is very easy to find things and a lot of people seem to like it
• Its pretty much a standard that telephone links initiate the call.  Use “tel:” in hyperlinks to phones, it enables the user to click a link that starts the call.

Testing your Mobile Web Design

There is no substitute for testing mobile web designs better than the original devices. But there are emulators.  Dreamweaver comes with Device Central.

Firefox has an add-on, the user agent switcher, that enables you to send different user agents so that you can receive mobile web sites into a browser.  You can also use the small screen renderer add-on to approximate the screen real estate of you device.

There us another tool where you can see mobile phone pages in your browser using transcoder pages.  See google.com/gwt/n?=http://yourdomain.com to use one.

There’s a list of testing tools at 10 Excellent Tools for Testing Your Site on Mobile Devices

Publishing your Mobile Web

You will need either a new domain or a subdomain for your mobile web.  A new domain means that you may have to pay an annual domain fee for you .mobi domain.  Many can add a subdomain for free to their existing web packages.  A common subdomain is m.yourdomain.com.

In terms of loading your web to your site the options are the same for desktop web sites, use a FTP client like FileZilla or use the built-in capabilities of programs like DreamWeaver, or ExpressionWeb.

My Blu-ray player plays every DVD, Blu-ray, and even every streaming Netflix movie as smooth as can be. Not so much for my Windows 7 HTPC (home theater PC). I have found several issues that affect how smoothly video and even audio play at times in various places.
The term is jitter. Jitter simply means uneven playback. And I have found a number of things that can cause this.
Hardware acceleration interferes with smooth playback. When viewing video in Adobe Flash, right click in the video window and select settings. If hardware acceleration is checked, uncheck it to turn it off in the software.
However, you may also have acceleration turned on the the BIOS as well. On my ASRock board, pressing ‘D’ on startup toggles “speed boost” which when turned on interferes with smooth video playback.
Additionally, my HTPC feeds several extenders. Sometimes just having an extender on will cause the video to be choppy on my HTPC. The only solution is to keep the extenders off when not in use.
Additionally, I am running Comskip, the commercial skipping program, with Windows Media Center. This program is wonderful when it is working right, skipping past commercials automatically, but it is very CPU intensive at times, especially when I am watching and it is processing a multi-hour show. In fact the program will become totally unresponsive sometimes under these conditions and/or choppy. I can, however, access task manager, and get to Services in the control panel. (You can also type services.msc in the textbox above Start.) I have found that stopping the ShowAnalyzerMaster Service (a component of ComSkip) will usually improve my video and give me back control of the computer.
And of course, while Windows is a wonderful multitasking environment, smooth video requires maximum attention from the computer so don’t forget to close any browser windows or other programs when in Media Center or don’t have anything “now playing” in Media Center if you want to use videos in your web browser.
As well, automatic features from updates to scans, all drain CPU power to the point of sometimes starving video playback. I have found that my little A6-5400 AMD CPU is only able to do so much. I turn off as many things that want to run in the background as I can except for virus scanning while browsing and the firewall.
And last, but not least, I have found that my OTA reception breaks up more the more there is interference from other electronic devices and electric motors in the vicinity of my antennas and tuners in the house. So I try to keep appliances and devices off for that reason as well as it is just energy saving in general.
Following these guideline I have been able to get relatively smooth videos in Media Center, and in online videos as well as the Netflix streaming service. However, that being said, both internet streaming and over the air program reception will occasionally be subpar. But for the minimal cost I am paying for internet and OTA being free that is a tradeoff that is worth it to me, at least at this time.
Happy media using.

Thanks to DynamicGaming1060 for this fix.  He put a Youtube video here showing this fix in much greater detail.

The codec that is supposed to enable Sony Movie Studio to play .mp4 files doesn’t work.  DynamicGaming1060 says to replace compound.dll (I found mine in C:\Program Files\Sony\Movie Studio Platinum 12.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\compoundplug\)  with qt7plug.dll. (You can do a Google search to find the file.

As usual, this is a “Do this at your own risk” item.  Be aware that replacing DLLs can ruin a program.  Verify the source of the file you download as safe.

All that being said, I did it and it worked.  I can now work with .mp4 files in Sony Movie Studio.

There are numerous ways to find the devices on your network from brute force DOS commands to utilities on your router to specialized freeware apps that do a handy job.

Brute Force: Hardest

At each computer, you can use:

ipconfig /all

to get the IP information at each computer and compile your own table.

Alternately, you can ping all the addresses in your subnet and see which ones ping.  An easier way is to use the following DOS command which pings all 255 addresses in a subnet and posts the result in a file called ipaddresses.txt in your documents folder.

FOR /L %i IN (1,1,254) DO ping -n 1 192.168.1.%i | FIND /i “Reply”>>c:\Users\<Your User Name>\documents\ipaddresses.txt

If your subnet is not 192.168.1.n then change the above line appropiately.

The text file will have all the IP addresses that were pinged successfully

Router Utilities: Easier:

You may be able to find the DHCP Clients table on your router.

Go to http:\\192.168.1.0 (or the appropriate beginning of your subnet or specific address) and use your admin name and password to access your router’s administration.  On my Linksys WRT54GL go to the Status tab, then the “Local Network” subtab.  Click the DHCP Clients Table.

Up comes a table with client name and IP address among other things.

Specialized Apps: Easiest

There are numerous apps now that will scan your network and generate a report.  You can search Cnet for network utilities to see reviews on various products

One such application, Advanced IP Scanner, is a freeware app that reads your network and lists the devices by IP address and manufacturer as well as the name, if available.

And, although I haven’t used it, it has an option to shut down a device.  That gives you the potential to shut down users who try to take advantage of your WiFi network without your knowledge.

I downloaded Advanced IP Scanner from the program’s web site.  This app requires administrator priviledges so right click the download to run the setup app as an administrator.

To use remote desktop, you must have it enabled in the system you want to connect to.  In Control Panel, in System, on the Remote tab is the checkbox to enable remote connections.

To connect to another computer, the Remote Connection tool is in the Communications folder which is in the Accessories folder which is in the All Programs folder off the Start Menu.  (It also may just be in the Accessories folder deppending on which version of windows you have.

You will need to login to the other computer as one of the users already set up pn the computer.  And if you are using a firewall (recommended), at least the first time, someone will need to be at the remote computer to allow the connection through the firewall.

My good old FIOS DVR let you change the Skip and Replay Intervals in the setup of the DVR.  Windows MCE isn’t that sophisticated.  But it is available to change if you are up to changing the registry.

As always, registry editing is done at your own risk.  Changing the wrong value in the registry can literally be fatal to your computer, so this is no place to play around, or guess.  If you are not sure don’t do it.  A good rule of thumb is to set a restore point before any registry editing.

That said and done, open the registry editor (click Start, type “regedit” (without the quotes) and hit enter):

Browse to HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoSettings

On my Vista laptop it looks like this:

Registry editor open to MCE video settings

I have placed arrows by the settings for InstantReplayInterval and SkipAheadInterval which are 7000 and 29000 (decimal) respectively.  These values are in milliseconds and correspond to 7 and 29 seconds.

To change a value double click on it.  For example, here is the skip ahead value:

Changing the skip ahead value

Notice that I have selected the Decimal base to see the 29000 value.  To change this to a minute I would change this to 60000.

Be safe and happy editing.

I am using an Harmony 200 remote with one of my extenders and it has worked great.   Today, however, it wouldn’t work and the three device buttons were flashing.

I checked the batteries and they were low.  Replacing the batteries didn’t correct the problem, however.

I tried to find a manual, but evidently none is available online.

However, from the Logitech forum I gleaned this information:

• It’s in safe mode
• Remove a battery
• While holding the 2 button on the number pad section of the remote, replace the battery
• Let go of the 2 button
• This will take it out of safe mode
• The device buttons will stop flashing and the remote will work

This worked for me.

Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 program is a wonderful and powerful program that works, in my humble opinion, better than any other consumer oriented video editing program on the market.  Perhaps I feel this way because it renders with the least problems.  (Notice I didn’t say without any problems, just the least that I have found.)  However, as with any program that has numerous and powerful features, the learning curve can be frustrating.

One of the things that has happened to me numerous times since I’ve gotten the program is that the timeline has somehow, mysteriously changed. I simply did not know what was going on.

Finally I figured it out. Besides the plus and minuses and controls at the end of the timeline slider at the bottom of the video editing window, there is a bar, albeit a very small bar, right above the slider that you can drag to change the timeline. I’ve marked this bar along with the plus and minus buttons in the image below:

I don’t know whether this is by design, or a bug in the program. But, sometimes, when you place the cursor over this bar you will get an arrow pointing east and west which if you drag will zoom in or out of the timeline, depending on the direction you drag.  I know this because I caught myself clicking to drag the slider and inadvertently started dragging the bar/line above the slider and to my amazement the timeline started zooming.

Happy Editing.

Windows Media Center (WMC) advertises they can work with wireless networks. WMC extenders come with big antennas. Is it really feasible to plan on having a whole house WMC feeding multiple extenders?

The answer is no. The problems are bandwidth and freedom from interference. Using a Silicondust HDHR3 device provides two streams of encoded HD media signal. Each stream measures about 14 Mbps in my Task Manager Network Performance screen. WMC allows for four tuners. That means with all four tuners active that the stream over the network can be as much is 56 Mbps. And that’s just the stream to the HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer).  If the HTPC is feeding another couple of extenders in the house that puts the network traffic at the HTPC at over 70 Mbps.

Since the extenders only operate at G wireless speeds (54Mbps max), that puts wireless network completely out of the question. In practice, using one dual tuner Silicondust device with the HTPC feeding one extender, the network was adequate to provide a stream to the extender for standard definition programming only. The stream was not even adequate for HD programming to one extender.  In attempting to communicate with two extenders, WMC’s built-in network tuner advised that there was too much interference to send a signal to any extenders at that point.

However, it looks like the entire network traffic is still under the hundred Mbps of Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), right?

My experience was that the performance of the HTPC was very good with the wired Fast Ethernet network as long as there weren’t more than two tuners being used. At three tuners I started seeing pixelation on my 47 inch Visio HDTV, if only in faster motion video. At first I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Perhaps my CPU was too slow, or my a SATA three hard drive couldn’t process all the data processing?

A Google search of the problem led me to some AVS forums where network bandwidth was cited as a possible culprit. Different members advised using gigabit Ethernet and also turning off any green features.

Once I swapped out my one fast Ethernet switch for a gigabit switch and turned off the green features of the built-in NIC card on my HTPC the problem was solved.

I found out in practice that the best performance was only found with a gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) wired network.  In my network with 4 tuners active going through a Fast Ethernet switch the signal never went to 56 Mbps.  But with all switches being Gigabit Ethernet, the stream with 4 tuners active ran at almost 56 Mbps constantly,  That says to me that the Fast Ethernet switch in my network caused either WMC or Silicondust HDHR3 to throttle back the network stream causing some pixelation.

Part of the problem, I think, may also be that there is always going to be other traffic on the network.  While it may be small, there is network traffic between switches and the router.  If you have a house like mine, with smart phones, tablet’s, and other users perhaps on the Internet your network traffic at times could be well over 100 Mbps.

Using gigabit Ethernet switches with WMC might require some fine tuning of other settings including flow control, but I didn’t have this problem.  If you do set up a gigabit Ethernet network and you do have some problems with slow video just be aware that you might need to change some other settings.

Happy DVRing

© copyright 2013 Mark W Smith, all rights reserved.

Most people start by deciding what they want to do with a phone. If you just want to make calls and a few texts then you don’t need a smart phone.  On the other hand if you like applications (Apps) including surfing the web and email on your phone you are a candidate for a smart phone.

In choosing both the phone and the plan the considerations include cost, features, and quality. Perhaps the most important feature to is that it can receive calls (and texts and web) at the locations that you frequent. That is why the first thing you need to do is check coverage maps and rule out any carriers that don’t have coverage at your places of home and work.  For example, perhaps you’re interested in a 4G LTE network for its super fast speed. Sprint may have a very good bargain on HTC phone, but it won’t do you any good if there’s no 4G LTE coverage in your area. For a quick explanation of cell phone generations, click here.

The next choice in acquiring a cell phone plan is its intended use. Are you a bells and whistles person and want the latest apps? Or do you just believe phones are used for just calling and perhaps a few texts?  Are you looking to stream a lot of videos and, consequently, want 4G LTE speed? Or, if you’re just looking for basic communication, any of the major carriers have 2G networks that should suffice.

When considering cell phone plans there are some aspects to consider:

1. Coverage areas: the best phone plan deal on earth is useless if you can’t receive calls and/or texts and/or web in places you need to.
2. Cost; is it less expensive to go individually or to be on a family plan? It used to be that network contract plans were the only way to get a really good plan with good features, but no contract, prepaid phones are a good deal for a lot of people these days.
3. Call minutes: is this just an emergency phone that you only need a few hundred minutes a month, or is this the replacement for your LAN line, and you really need to have unlimited minutes?
4. Texts, do you only do a few text so that $.20 a text is not a problem, or do you have a number of people texting you regularly and you need unlimited texting as part of your plan?
5. Web use; what is the data cap?  When you are out using your smart phone on the web are you just going to occasionally use it to look at your e-mail, or perhaps find store locations or product information online while you’re shopping? Or perhaps you like to look at videos in your downtime. If that’s the case, you might need multiple gigs a month of cap space,
6. Operating system or lack of: Apps are all the rage these days. But the available apps depend on which operating system is on your phone:
   1. Apple sets a very high standard for its product and has its own unique operating system with a big fan base
   2. Android, which comes in various versions, is very competitive, and recently, has offered features, like talking and texting at the same time, before Apple has them.
   3. Windows, a late comer to mobile operating systems, nevertheless has a good feature set.
   4. Hybrid systems; some phones are not android, nevertheless have their own proprietary e-mail, web, Facebook and/or other apps
   5. there are phones that don’t do anything but take calls, and perhaps text
7. remember that some features, like GPS, other apps, and ring tones, may require additional cost above and beyond the initial cost of your plan

Once you’ve decided the bells and whistles, or lack thereof, you are looking for in a phone, the next step is to look for a phone of good quality that does the job you need at a reasonable cost.  The easiest way to go is to find the carrier that you are interested in, and look on their website for phone deals. This is why it is important to have researched cell phone carriers first, because you only want to look on sites that have networks that will work with your needs. Then you’re going to need to do some research. Places like CNET and PCMag review phones as well as you can often find phone reviews on YouTube. Another choice is to look on Amazon.com. Amazon has proven itself to be useful not only in providing products at very good prices, but in providing customer feedback so you can get a good sampling from the users of these products.

There are a number of aspects of phones to consider, but I recommend that you pay attention to references to the following items when you look at reviews.

1. Call quality:  Is a phone call easy to hear both on your end and the listeners? Call quality can vary so if you find any references to call quality with a weaker signal that is very useful. Call quality is dependent on a number of things including the weather, network traffic, ambient noise, and your carrier.  I found this useful, but somewhat dated article on smart phones with good audio quality here.
2. Is the phone and operating system stable? When you read multiple reviews of a phone that needs rebooted, (yes, phones may need to be reset as smart phones are minicomputers), that’s a good indicator that you might not want this phone
3. How hard is it to type on the phone?  There are a multiplicity of ways these days to type on phones including QWERTY keyboards, slide out QWERTY keyboards, number only keypad, and the increasingly popular on screen touch QWERTY keyboards.  There are a number of different technologies used for touch screens, and not all of them are created equal. Look for references in reviews that the screen is hard to type on.
4. If the phone has speech recognition technology, is it really workable? There is a great variation in speech recognition these days. So be careful in room viewing phones that have speech recognition for comments on how well it worked for the particular phone you’re looking at.
5. What apps come with the phone?  I read a review the other day about a common application that the user thought was included with the phone only to find out that it was free for 30 days, and seven dollars a month after that. I forget which application it was but it was a frequently used app and he was not happy to learn that he would have to pay $84 a year for that one application.

An alternative to buying a phone on the carrier’s website is buying your own unlocked phone and using that with your desired carrier.    See the carrier’s website to see the rules for using your own phone.

My wife and I just signed up to use the Walmart Family Plan using used unlocked Apple iPhone 3GS phones we bought on Ebay.  The monthly service cost at $75 per month is less than the 550 minute/month plan we had with AT&T after we each did a few texts and a little web use (and all the fees.).  Our needs are satisfied with the basic plan with 3G speeds we get with new carrier, and the used iPhones are far superior to the old dumb phones we were using.

A comparison of unlimited calling plans costs for mostly no contract calling plans is located here.

© copyright 2013 Mark W Smith, all rights reserved.