Chris Love's Official ASP.NET Blog

How to Take Screen Shots From An Android Phone or Tablet

2012-01-12T18:07:06Z

Taking screen shots of an application is essential to the development and marketing process. You really need something to reference to any marketing or advertising that people can see. After all how will I have a good idea if your application will actually be usable or meet my needs? In the development process I have found it especially helpful to take screen shots as reference when fixing bugs. But more importantly to aid in communicating UI concepts and concerns with co-workers and clients. Now...(read more)

Using the Cloud to Enable the Next Generation of Mobile Enterprise Applications

2012-01-06T05:14:47Z

Next week we, Tellago, will be holding a live Webinar discussing how the Cloud will enable Enterprises, any company for that matter, to create the next generation of mobile enterprise applications. If you belong to a company and have been thinking about how all the tablets and smart phones employees are using for personal and business life are changing the way business IT is structured and how your company is going to leverage it this will be a great event for you to attend. Register To Attend Our...(read more)

Why Consumers Buy The Mobile Devices They Buy

2011-12-28T13:36:18Z

Several years ago I was hanging out in the INETA TechEd lounge the entire week with different friends. We had a great time, but I was the only person there without a cool phone. I honestly do not recall the first generation iPhone being available at the time, but it was close to its release. Everyone had QWERTY keyboards, some sort of slow Internet connection and of course e-mail access. I had a Motorola ic-502 flip phone. No matter how much my friends gave me a hard time about my “hand crank phone”...(read more)

How FedEx.com Could Increase Customer Satisfaction and Profits with 10 Minutes of HTML5

2011-12-16T18:53:51Z

Earlier this week I needed to setup a FedEx account to have a package delivered. Since I use my iPad for most web site interactions these days I decided to sign up using the tablet and the on screen keyboard. Needless to say the experience did not go well or I would not being this as a teaching opportunity. I was able to register, but it could have gone much better and taken quite a bit less time. So today I am going to show how spending about as much time as a typical user needs to register FedEx...(read more)

To Say Mobile is to Set A False Limit on Your Reach

2011-12-09T17:42:56Z

I am really excited to be Tellago's Chief Mobility Officer . I have an official title that is chic and I get to play with a lot of toys everyday. No you cannot have my job! But there is something I think is misleading in that title and that is the term mobile . The term tends to be overplayed because it implies a certain limit on application reach that is unacceptable to me. To say an application is either desktop or mobile, consumer or enterprise is really bad and we need to change this perception....(read more)

Black Friday SmartPhone Deals on Windows Phone

2011-11-25T15:38:05Z

So you want a new phone or are thinking about getting a new phone for someone. Amazon has the deal for you. A few days ago I wrote some hands on reviews about some of the new breed of Windows Phones I got to hold. They are all very strong phones with the great features and functionality offered by Windows Phone. Amazon is starting this year's Christmas season off in style offering all their non-iPhone smartphones for only a penny with a service contract. This means there should be little to no barrier...(read more)

2 Years Still Thankful for Tellago

2011-11-24T16:57:00Z

Two years, it's hard to comprehend how fast the time has flown and how much my life has changed. November 2 marked my two year anniversary with Tellago and I thought I would try to express what these past two years have been like today, Thanksgiving. Back in July 2010, after about 8 months after joining Tellago I wrote about my experiences and thankfulness at the time . Honestly not much has changed, I can still say those expressions are still true, which is a good thing. In that first post I...(read more)

How To Invoke the JavaScript Console on Your iPad

2011-11-18T13:55:09Z

Debugging AJAX on a mobile device is tricky at best. There are no Firebug or F12 tools available. This means we do not have a nice way to set break points or step through our code when there is an error. Not to mention how do you even know when there is an error or what error actually happened? Invoking the Mobile Safari, iPhone & iPad, is actually pretty easy. You need to open up the settings on your iOS device, then select Safari. Your screen will look like the following: At the bottom of the...(read more)

Hands On With New Breed Of Windows Phones

2011-11-17T05:56:50Z

Last night I had an opportunity to attend a Windows Phone Inner Circle event where I got to try out many of the newest Windows Phone handsets. I even won a new HTC Titan , which is just a beast. While I was really excited to hold and experience these new phones actually running with something besides the in store demos you see at the local AT&T store, I was disappointed not to see one of the new Nokia Windows Phones. I am going to share photos, specs and impressions about each of the phones I...(read more)

Better UX Through INPUT Tags And Why They Are Important For Mobile

2011-11-16T12:42:23Z

As browsers adopt more and more HTML5 goodness developers need to be cognoscente of new features to create better and better user experiences. As far back as I can remember the INPUT element has been a workhorse that allows the web to collect information from users. You have always been able to specify if the input field is text or a password by setting the type. Other options include buttons, checkboxes, file uploads and just about anything else we have needed for basic data entry. As users and...(read more)

Making hashchange Work Better on Windows Phone

2011-11-15T16:11:14Z

Recently I have been creating single page web applications utilizing URL fragments . Essentially this is a new twist to an old technique that has been around for a very long time. While not used as much these days I remember around a decade ago a common technique on long pages was to provide links to sections, like the link I provided to the W3C about URL fragments, http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970708/htmlweb.html#h-4.1.1 . notice the #h-4.1.1 fragment at the end of the URL? That tells the...(read more)

Creating a Mobile Web Application on the iPhone and iPad

2011-11-11T13:32:00Z

What seems like one of the least known features in the mobile web space is the ability to create a web app on the iPhone and iPad. If you hit the button in mobile Safari you will have several options. One is “Add To Home Screen”. This gives you the ability to add a bookmark to the home page, making it easier to launch the site. It can also put you on equal footing with native apps. Having a home page icon, even if it is a simple screen shot is nice. But there are several things you can...(read more)

The Death of Flash and Silverlight

2011-11-10T14:07:32Z

This week there has been news that Silverlight 5 might just be the last version of the technology that never really seemed to get any real traction. This morning I woke to several stories about Adobe killing any further development of it's flash mobile plugin . Both Microsoft and Adobe seem to understand the future of client development does not lie in a proprietary plugin technology, but in HTML5 . Flash has long been the standard bearer of richer experiences inside browsers. Designers have...(read more)

Touch Friendly Design – Bringing Life to Lists

2011-11-09T13:34:00Z

Yesterday I talked about how creating traditional <A> driven navigation can be problematic in today’s touch first world . In yesterday’s demonstration I pointed out how using hyperlinks and a traditional menued navigation scheme can lead to user error when touching a target. Today I wanted to extend my thoughts by showing how even using a hyperlink in a list of links can be just as problematic. The iPhone has made the use of vertical list common. Often menu options are listed on...(read more)

Touch Friendly Design–Making Touchable Targets

2011-11-08T14:27:14Z

The way we design application clients has radically changed in the past couple of years with the proliferation of SmartPhone and tablets with touch screens. Touch is the newest common user input methodology. Sadly it seems to be broadly ignored by the developer majority. By this I want to call attention to the way we design modern web and native mobile applications, which tends to retain aspects common to legacy web sites. In particular the use of anchor <A/> tags and other small action points...(read more)