The Mobile Web Handbook

by Peter-Paul Koch, Smashing Magazine (Editor)

Weird browser bugs, inconsistent CSS/JS support, performance issues, mobile fragmentation, device pixels, viewports, zooming, touch event cascade, pointer and click events and the 300-millisecond delay. No, mobile isn’t dark matter, but it does require you to learn a few new things, some of which are quite confusing.

The Mobile Web Handbook will help you to make sense of it all. It’s our brand new practical guide for dealing with front-end challenges on mobile — effectively. Written by Peter-Paul Koch, it features recent research findings and shows the intricacies of mobile, with its common problems and workarounds, and delivers what it promises: real-world advice for mobile — very unique and extremely useful.

How do you handle mobile browsers? What do you need to know about networks, operators and device vendors? What's the story behind position: fixed, overflow: auto and the three viewports? Are touch events reliable and how exactly do they work? And how do you test on mobile anyway? The book covers all these issues in detail, with lots of practical takeaways along the way.

In fact, building websites for mobile is buggy, unless you know why these bugs come up. With The Mobile Handbook, you'll learn just that — and also how to tackle common issues ahead of time, even before they come up.

The book will be useful for mobile strategists, developers, designers, and everybody willing to better understand the intricacies of mobile — both technical and market-related. Whether you want to get a better picture or dive deep into common browser bugs on mobile, this is just the book you need.


232 pages. Written by Peter-Paul Koch. Designed by Stephen Hay. Reviewed by Stephanie and Brian Rieger. September 2014.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: The Mobile World
Chapter 2: Browsers
Chapter 3: Android
Chapter 4: Viewports
Chapter 5: CSS
Chapter 6: Touch and Pointer Events
Chapter 7: Becoming a Mobile Web Developer
Chapter 8: The Future of the Web on Mobile

Genres: Web, Programming, Technology, Design, Software

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2014

Reviews

[William Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Instead of teaching how to write CSS for responsive design, or some other mobile web development technique that's already been covered by dozens of blog posts and Stack Overflow answers, The Mobile Web Handbook unpacks fundamental principles. Author Peter-Paul Koch, of QuirksMode fame, walks through the fundamental novelties and challenges of the mobile web as a platform, starting with the browser/device/telecom landscape and continuing mobile viewports and philosophical differences between browser vendors on how touch events should be handled.

It's an excellent book for those starting to work on mobile web. It's also supplies fundamental background that even experienced web developers probably missed.

If I haven't convinced you yet, check out PPK's excellent talk on mobile viewports to get an idea of what's in the book.

[Ulee ☄︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Cline's review pretty much sums up my thoughts on the book. However, I will add that I dislike when I buy a book and then most of the chapters are filled with links telling me to read more on a subject at a website. I know this is a tech book and the tech changes, but not the theory. So I would like to read about the theory in a book and then link to the implementation, or something of that nature. Especially if I'm traveling and i don't have access to an internet connection. Which is kind of ironic because towards the end of the book, he talks about making your app accessible offline, heh.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

my brain hurts in a good way.

[Vetrichelvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a web developer working on mobile sites, then you should read this

[Rasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect to learn so much, and that there are so many fundamental differences between web on desktop and mobile. The book has a really good introduction on the mobile world and the different browsers and devices out there. It dedicated a chapter for android which made sense since Android holds the bigger market share and because there are so many different browsers and devices for Android.

I didn't know there are different viewports to be honest, and there's a chapter that talks about them and the difference between them. Then it moves to talking about specific Javascript and CSS differences on Desktop and mobile in two different chapters. It also offered solutions and some snippets of code to different common problems.

I liked that it was fugue about some things that he knew will change from the time he wrote the book, like some compatibility issues for different browsers, but offered links to websites that will have the correct up to date data when relevant.

He ended the book with good advice on how to become a mobile web developer, if that's what you're hoping to be and you're not just reading this to be aware of main problems and how to fix them for your site. It also has a few pages about the future of the web, and he has some interesting ideas on mobile web VS native.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really great detail here about what's going on with mobile browsers in general and a good survey of the major differences between browses. I'm sure I'll go back to this as a references in the future.

[Lydia]

wooo mobile web wooo

[Don Lundman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential

If you plan to develop for the mobile web, read this book. It will give you the lay of the land, for sure. It might also head off a lot of trial-and-error learning.

[Volodymyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential. Covers fundamental principles and some details regarding mobile web, don't expect it to describe responsive design techniques — that's not its purpose.

[Hugh Springer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another great web and application dev resource of information from the Smashing team.

[Chantal Bellemare · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the technical issues on mobile and how to deal with them effectively - including mobile testing.