Mobile Web Development: Building mobile websites, SMS and MMS messaging, mobile payments, and automated voice call systems with XHTML MP, WCSS, and mobile AJAX

In Detail

As more users access the Web from their phones and other handhelds, web developers need to learn techniques for targeting these new devices. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google target mobiles with their services and products. Companies use mobile services to provide staff access to their applications while away from a computer.

This book is a complete, practical guide to writing mobile websites and applications. You will learn how to create mobile-friendly websites, adapt your content to the capabilities of different devices, save bandwidth with compression, and create server-side logic that integrates with a mobile front end. You will also see other methods for integrating your web application with mobile technology: sending and receiving MMS and SMS messages, accepting mobile payments, and working with voice calls to provide spoken interaction.

The book illustrates every technique with practical examples, showing how to use these development methods in the real world. Along the way we show how an example pizza delivery business can use these methods to open up to the mobile web.
Whether you want to provide customers and users of your public website with new ways to access your services, or build applications so that staff can stay up to date while on the road, this book will show you all you need to build a powerful mobile presence.

Technologies and tools covered in the book

PHP, JavaScript, AJAX, XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP), Wireless CSS, WAP 2.0, Tera WURFL, MyMobileWeb, Mobile Web Toolkit, Image Server, GAIA Image Transcoder, HAWHAW , ready.mobi, Nokia's Mobile Internet Toolkit , SMIL, Voxeo's Prophecy server, VoiceXML (VXML), grXML, Frost library, WALL, WURFL, SMS, MMS, mobile payment gateways, mobile widgets, Mobile AJAX, Android, Google Gears, and Dojo Offline.

What you will learn from this book?

• Build a mobile-friendly front end for your site - learn XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) and Wireless CSS (WCSS), the CSS subset supported by mobile devices; target the full range of mobile browsers; adapt automatically to the capabilities of the device.

• Write interactive mobile applications - present and process mobile forms with different input types; support keypad navigation; get started with Mobile Ajax and JavaScript.
• Accept payments online via mobile web and SMS using Paypal, SMS short codes, and more.
• Integrate your application with SMS and MMS messages - enable users to send SMS and MMS messages to your site, process them, and send SMS and MMS messages back to your users too; set up your own SMS gateway, or choose an existing gateway provider; include slideshows, movies, and sounds.
• Handle voice calls - respond to voice input, create touchtone services, play pre-recorded voice or use text-to-speech to provide voice-based software.
• Future-proof your application - understand the basics of iPhone development, the Android platform, and the implications of other developments in the mobile space.
  

Approach

The author adopts a fast-paced, practical approach to developing for the mobile web. The book focuses on solutions, pragmatic tips, and fast results rather than theory.

Each chapter focuses on an aspect of taking a pizza delivery company onto the mobile web. This ensures that the chapters remain practical and realistic, focusing on getting things done. The book also provides discussion and reference material to help you apply the techniques to your own projects.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for web developers who want to provide mobile support for their applications.

The book assumes some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The reader should also know a server-side language. The examples in the book use PHP, but can be adapted easily to other languages. The book does not use J2ME, focusing instead on using the phone's web browser and other standard features.