Middle East ad spending hits $13.7b

According to a report by Pan Arab Research Centre, the advertising industry in the Middle East recovered in 2010 from a slump in 2009, as ad expenses jumped 24% to $13.7bn. Egypt emerged as the leading advertising market in 2010 with $1.49bn, up from $1.2bn in 2009, while the UAE witnessed a 3% decline, a much improved result than in 2009 when revenue tumbled 27%, the report said. Saudi Arabia expenditure saw a 6% gain in 2010 from a 4% fall in 2009. Elsewhere, Kuwait recorded an 11% rise, Lebanon climbed 16%, Qatar posted a 16% increase, Oman gained 17%, Jordan picked up 1%, and Bahrain soared 37%.

Making It a Mobile Web App

Making It a Mobile Web App

Ask any interactive agency nowadays what their clients are asking for when they need a mobile experience — the answer will inevitably be “an iPhone and/or an iPad app.” Native Apple apps are a hot commodity, and in today’s mobile application ecosystem, mobile web apps are not sexy. In fact, many people don’t even realize they are even an option. In certain cases, an iPhone/iPad app will be the right solution for their needs.

However, there are some situations where it may become a short-term win, but eventually a long-term loss. Mobile web apps offer a good number of advantages over native apps; and though they face some design, development and deployment challenges, they are a powerful cross platform, scalable and affordable solution.

Increasing Fragmentation

Mobile apps are all the rage. There are a slew of startups targeting the iPad, countless entrepreneurs hacking together the next killer iPhone app, and it seems as though every big company has released an app of some sort. With the increasing penetration of Android phones, developers are scrambling to port their software.

But what about deploying to Windows Phone 7, Blackberry and Symbian? Who wants to study yet another SDK, learn another language, and go through yet another app submission process? Who will continue to keep the code up to date for all these platforms as each one splinters into new incarnations, releases new hardware and OS updates. Fragmentation is a costly long-term investment. And people are beginning to realize that native apps are not a sustainable long-term solution for all their needs.

GAP StyleMixer application for both iOS & Android

The Mobile Web is Everywhere

As the native mobile app market becomes increasingly fragmented, it is becoming clear that there needs to be a solution which can re-use code and designs across platforms, and which eases deployment headaches. But why invent a new solution, when it already exists on every device out there: the Web.Webkit is gaining ground as the de facto standard for rendering web content, but even Webkit isn’t appropriate for every application. It wouldn’t be recommended for experiences that need complex graphics rendering, require hooks into specific hardware such as camera or accelerometer, or have hefty media requirements.

Though these constraints will change over time. But for all other apps that don’t need these features, using the mobile web frees developers to use their web technology of choice, so long as it will render on mobile browsers. Design and develop once, deploy everywhere. With smart design and code, a single web app could render appropriately on differing resolutions and screen sizes, and respond accordingly to touch, 5-way or cursor. Indeed, frameworks for mobile web app development already exist, such asSencha Touch.

Sencha Touch Mobile Web Development Framework

Old News

Desktop web apps are far from a new idea — Rich Internet apps have been around for a while. Google has been pushing in this direction for years, creating a broad suite of online tools, primarily for the desktop, with an increasing focus on mobile. However, web apps have been slow to gain traction in the mobile space. Even with Apple promoting mobile web apps as the next best thing on their 1st generation iPhone in 2007, the focus is still squarely on native apps. And the primary reason for this is due to the overwhelming success of Apple’s (native) App Store.

The App Store Model

Apple’s App Store was not the first to distribute native applications to mobile phones, but they proved it was a viable model, and launched the concept into popular culture. It’s this same model that would be necessary to make a mobile web app ecosystem successful.

Foursquare App in Google’s Android Market

As a consumer, it’s more appealing to go to one trusted online outlet for stuff than to waste time searching the web for the same thing, and putting yourself at risk of being hacked. Mobile web apps need a consolidated storefront for much the same reasons.

First, it’s easy to find apps when they are indexed, categorized, and searchable in one place. Second, a robust community of users exposing app popularity, contributing ratings and writing reviews makes it easier to evaluate your choices. Third, when I’ve decided to buy a game such as Plants and Zombies, I want to be sure my purchase will be a safe one — something a robust app store from a recognized company should offer. And since a web app is cross-platform, you could play it on your Android phone, your iPad, and your desktop — all with a single purchase. Buy once, use anywhere. It’s magic!

As a business or developer creating web apps, a centralized web app store provides benefits over doing it solo. Most importantly, it provides a source of monetization. This is the key to driving adoption of a web app ecosystem, as without revenue, businesses and developers will stick with money-making native apps. It’s also a marketing channel, allowing for easy discovery and promotion. Another potential benefit of using a web app storefront would be the APIs to help developers deal with authentication, licensing and other technical hurdles of digital distribution.

It’s Possible Now

A great majority of native apps could be deployed today as full featured mobile web apps. The HTML5 family of technologies allow for refined typography, animation, streaming video, offline storage, and the list goes on. Probably the most high profile web app to date is the Youtube mobile site, which delivers a comparable experience to the native apps they have built.

Youtube Mobile Web Experience

Real World Challenges

As with any innovation, there are big questions that need to be answered. The most obvious is the issue of cross-platform compatibility. Building a robust and rich cross-platform mobile web app experience would benefit from HTML5 technology support, but currently RIM and Microsoft’s mobile offerings use their own standards. This weakens the des/dev once, deploy anywhere story; but is by no means a dealbreaker. Web developers have long dealt with coding to accommodate troublesome browsers, and this would be a similar case.

Another challenge in the ‘deploy anywhere’ scenario arises when you look at how a given design translates across devices with varying resolutions, form factors and input methods. Application designers will need to approach this problem by targeting several key resolution/form factor combinations, similar to what is recommended by the Android SDK. Depending on what device an app is being run on, the design, layout and functionality may differ significantly. This can be solved using a combination of intelligent design and careful development.

Last but not least is the problem of providing consistent, quality user experiences in this new application space. We’ve seen how the Android’s app offerings often leave much to be desired in terms of visual design and usability while Apple has been more successful in defining quality experiences. Providing a set of best practices, design patterns, and components for designers would go a long way towards the creation of quality mobile web app experiences that would win over consumers. As mobile web apps gain credibility, we will see more offering such as Sencha Touch and Sproutcore that provide solid web development and experience frameworks.

The Inevitable Victory of the Web Browser

Web applications as ‘the next big idea’ might never happen — but in the coming years, more and more websites will have mobile incarnations that look a lot like applications. You’ll be swiping through articles, pinching photos, and flicking pests off your Farmville plot — all in your mobile browser. And people won’t even realize that in the end, the next generation mobile web won.

The HTML5 Logo: What Do You Think?

This has been an interesting week for the web design community, to say the least. The W3C revealed a new HTML5 logo to help designers and developers ‘tell the world’ that they’re using HTML5. The logo wasdesigned by Ocupop design agency, and it’s licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, a permissive license that allows ‘remixing’ of the licensed work. The logo has been made available onstickers and t-shirts, and there’s a gallery already promoting examples of the logo in use.



The logo’s official site includes a “badge builder” that customizes its orientation and allows you to add supplementary icons to indicate support for the different technologies that have become associated with HTML5.



According to the W3C Blog, the purpose of the logo is as follows:

We intend for it to be an all-purpose banner for HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, and other technologies that constitute an open web platform. The logo does not have a specific meaning; it is not meant to imply conformance or validity, for example. The logo represents “the Web platform” in a very general sense.

That all-encompassing definition has met with some opposition from Jeremy Keith. According to Keith, while he does approve of the logo’s design, he disagrees with the blurring of the lines that separate the web technologies that the logo is supposed to represent. Keith doesn’t have a problem with the media using the term “HTML5″ to cover this broad area, but he feels it’s not appropriate to push this kind of terminology in the web development industry.

In support of the definition, Ocupop Creative Director Michael Nieling said in a statement that “HTML5 needs a consistent, standardized visual vocabulary to serve as a framework for conversations, presentations, and explanations.”

Keith’s concerns are valid. The logo will certainly strengthen the awareness of HTML5 (which is something we all want), but it’s difficult to accept that something like WOFF, which is a web font format and has nothing to do with the HTML5 spec, will fall under the “HTML5″ umbrella. Similarly, CSS3 does not belong in that scope. But interestingly, you’ll notice in that quote from the W3C blog post that the “all-purpose banner” includes “CSS” — so it’s not just the new stuff in CSS3, it’s all of CSS. I can’t see many people being too happy about this.




And if that wasn’t enough, before the web design community had a chance to exhale, the WHATWG Blog published a post entitled “HTML is the new HTML5″, announcing two changes: (1) The HTML specification will be known simply as “HTML” (dropping the “5”); and (2) The spec will be considered a “living standard”, not just a draft, dropping use of the “snapshot” model of development.