Best Practices: Designing Mobile Applications

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These days, mobile devices are as common as chewing gum.  Will your next application be ready to hit the streets?

I recently talked to a group of MIS majors at Baylor University about Windows Mobile Design.  Here are some tips and tricks to help you with your User Interface (UI) Design.

Thanks to Dr. Willis for sparing his class time for this talk and Dr. Green for coordinating my visit.

Window Mobile Design Presentation

Here are a few highlights:

Good Menu Design

•No popup menu on left soft key

•Single-word on left soft key

•Left soft key must not be “destructive”

•Minimize use of sub-menus

•Use separators between menu items

•No explicit ‘&’ or numbering

Respect a User's Color Scheme

•Respect user’s color theme

•If must hard code colors, start with RGB

•Sample UI elements and how to determine their color (e.g. dialog box header, black line, UI text etc.)

Window Mobile Design Presentation

Mobile Devices. Mobile Devices put a fun spin on otherwise straight forward programming and now that you can get Visual Studio Professional in DreamSpark mobile programming is free.  Download the Windows Mobile SDK. Other resources:  Game Development on Mobile Devices Webcast Series, Four Steps to Getting Started with Windows Mobile 6.0, Full Library of Mobility Webcasts and Virtual Labs, Windows Mobile Team Blog