• Networked: able to get itself online and thereby read and write Internet content or run services from “the cloud”
• Consumer: designed and intended for everyday use not solely professional or specialized tasks
• Device: a form factor made for a particular use or set of uses. Technically, a digital device because of integrated electronics.
• Platform: you can build on it. Developers can create software for it or hardware to integrate with it. Content authors can publish to it.

Let’s look at some examples:

Gaming consoles like the XBOX 360, nintendo wii, and Playstation 360. These devices connect to the Internet to provide access to news, media, and entertainment content, while also allowing game players to communicate and collaborate with each other online. Gaming consoles are designed for a wide range of consumers and their living rooms. Developers can not only build games for the platform but also Web services like video streaming and ebook-and-Twitter-on-Xbox-010609.htm”>social networking.

Smart Phones like the Apple iPhone, Palm Pre, any Android phone, and more. These portable devices connect to the Internet for gaming, tools, news, local information, search, and just about anything. Smart phones have a broad set of capabilities that developers can build against and often integrate/promote application stores to provide consumers access to additional software.

Media Players like Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader and Apple’s iPod music, image, and video player. These devices go online to access media content like books, movies, TV shows, and albums. Musicians, Authors, Podcasters, Bloggers, and more can package up content for consumers to purchase on these devices. In the case of the iPod, developers can also build applications and games.

Networked TVs like Samsung Internet@TV, LG Broadband, and Sony Bravia HDTV. These 10 foot living room experiences use Internet access to deliver video, image, and news content to people’s TV sets. Developers can build widgets and media experiences using platforms like Yahoo!’s Connected TV Widgets.

Netbooks & Tablets like the much-rumored Apple tablet, and the popular stripped-down laptops known as Netbooks. These portable devices are all about Internet access. While developers can build as they always have for Web browsers and operating systems like Windows to run applications on these devices, other development capabilities like iPhone OS and Google’s Chrome OS may be forthcoming.

Tags: technology, mobile, sensors, context
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Mobile app stores can provide access to the few services that matter online. Therefore they can deliver the top sites that most people care about and actually use on a daily basis. Mobile app platforms can lure developers away from building applications for the Web with integrated capabilities (multimedia, sensors, monetization, etc.) and consistent run-times (no cross-platform and cross-browser development). Mobile stores actually make it possible for services to be found through smaller catalogs, structured data, and browse/merchandising features.

The Few Services that Matter
The top 50 Internet properties (PDF of comScore rankings) represent a disproportionate amount of Web traffic. Consider that 157 million of the 193 million total US Internet audience visited Google. So if a mobile application platform has representation of the top 50 sites on the Web, they have a huge amount of coverage for core Web behaviors. Essentially most services people could access on the Web, they could then access on a mobile app. If they begin using their mobile apps more than the URLs in their desktop Web browser, that’s a problem for Web applications. Current data shows this is exactly what’s going on.

Rich Capabilities
Many mobile application platforms are attractive to developers because they have technical capabilities that leave the Web browser behind. In order for Web applications to really compete with native mobile applications, they’ll need some serious enhancements. Many of which are in active development in HTML 5 and proprietary solutions from companies like Google:

• The ability to run offline. In HTML 5 AppCache and Database make it easier to run apps offline and Google has built this into Gears & Chrome
• The ability to run more efficiently. Javascript performance improvements and the ability to run background threads that do processing that would otherwise slow the browser to a crawl (Web workers in HTML 5).
• Access to operating system resources. Making use of sensors, audio, image, and video output and inputs as well as local file stores. The video and audio element in HTML 5: embed audio/video on a web page like you embed images today (no plugins).
• The ability to render graphics and animations quickly and elegantly. For example, Apple’s iPhone supports Quartz, Core Animation, and OpenGL ES. Quartz is a powerful 2D drawing engine for creating vector graphics, bitmap images, and PDF content. Core Animation is the technology that adds smooth motion and dynamic feedback to your user interface by creating an illusion of motion. OpenGL ES is the interface for high-performance 3D graphics on mobile devices. HTML 5 includes the canvas element: a way to draw graphics on a web page using Javascript

Findability
Lastly, though many complain about the difficulty of getting found within large mobile application store inventory. Their chances are still better than on the open Web. As an example, Apple’s App store (perhaps the most popular store now) has 65,000 applications. Google indexes and searches over a trillion Web pages.

App stores also maintain structured data about applications. That is, developers provide titles, categories, descriptions, screenshots, release dates, pricing, and more to app store owners when they submit their application. This creates a structured set of data that can be searched against. On the open Web, search engines are often trying to stitch a lot of these attributes together themselves and as a result, fall short. Structured data provides more (dependable) ways to enable people to find services. Lastly, app stores have built in browsing and merchandising features so apps are not solely dependent on people’s search terms to be found. As a result, the chances of sticking out in an app store are much improved.

Tags: mobile, apple, search, technology, Web applications, javascript
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Take a multi-step dialog sequence, such as, say, signing up for a new account. Each step will have the content — the fields the user will fill in, including their name, address, and billing information. Yet, each step also requires some user interface chrome — those design elements that move the user to the next step (or back to the previous one, when something needs revisiting).

What I find interesting is, often in the design process, we focus more on the chrome than on the content. Yet, it’s the content that is most important to the user — the part of the UI they need to focus on most. The chrome, when it’s working well, should seem invisible and natural.

In today’s UIEtips article, Previous and Next Actions in Web Forms, Luke Wroblewski shows us what we need to know to make an important part of that chrome invisible: the Previous and Next actions. He’s done a fabulous job of dissecting the problem and talking about exactly what needs to happen to make the interface seem natural to the user, which, in turn, lets them focus on the content.

Luke, of course, is *the man* to talk to when thinking about these things. His brilliant book, Web Form Design: Filling In The Blanks, is chock-full of great insights. We’re pleased he’ll be repeating his full-day seminar, Web Application Form Design, at our upcoming Web App Summit.

What’s been your experience with the sticky problem of Previous and Next actions? Do you have a solution that works well with your audience? We’d love to hear your experiences and questions. Leave a comment below.

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