Tuesday, June 1, 2004
Keep Mobile Apps Simple, Say IT Managers
Posted by Janak Parekh in "ARTICLE" @ 10:00 PM
"When IT managers develop mobile and wireless applications, keeping them simple and small is usually the best route to take, according to several experienced users who spoke at Mobile & Wireless World. Even though mobile devices can mimic most of the capabilities of a desktop PC, such as handling attachments and rich text documents, plain text is usually a better choice for sending data, said Ralph Nichols, a service program manager at Pitney Bowes Inc. in Stamford, Conn. Nichols developed a purely text-based mobile application that is being rolled out to the mailing equipment maker's 3,500 field service technicians."
Most of this short article is common-sense, but it's an adage oft forgotten -- when you want to deploy tools on a mobile device, design for that device. While as a power user I want to eke out the full functionality from my PDA, that's not necessarily true for the average corporate end-user. I suspect that's one of the reasons why MS is pushing .NET CF: it's designed to be a tool for rapidly deploying PDA-centric solutions that can easily interface with web services and other platforms on the server-side.
Most of this short article is common-sense, but it's an adage oft forgotten -- when you want to deploy tools on a mobile device, design for that device. While as a power user I want to eke out the full functionality from my PDA, that's not necessarily true for the average corporate end-user. I suspect that's one of the reasons why MS is pushing .NET CF: it's designed to be a tool for rapidly deploying PDA-centric solutions that can easily interface with web services and other platforms on the server-side.
