Mobile CSS: The Possibilities, the Problems...
As per usual, I picked a topic where I was able to dive in completely over my head. This topic is huge (which I knew it was), but I was hoping that I would be able to scratch the surface with something approaching competence. The jury is still out on that last bit, but I have tried my best, so here we go.
In my project I wanted to explore the topic of the mobile web and how CSS is handled on handheld devices as well as how CSS can help us handle handheld devices. I focused my research around the following five questions:
- What kind of CSS support is there across mobile browsers?
- How can we effectively test our mobile designs?
- Do we need to create separate "mobile" sites or is having a separate style sheet sufficient? What are the pros and cons?
- What are the design restrictions and possibilities? (ex. How are "hover" effects handled when you have no cursor? etc.)
- How can we use CSS to make our websites "Zen" in the expanding mobile web market?
I can't honestly say that I've answered any of these questions, but I have explored them all to some extent.
You can either jump to discussions of each of these questions individually or browse my report in a linear fashion.