Ektron 9.00
Creating a Mobile-Driven Web Experience
Web traffic from mobile devices is accelerating. Making your website available to mobile users is not enough. Your website must deliver the same, consistent level of experience to your mobile visitors as you do for those who visit your website on their desktop to ensure that your consumers are accessing information, products, and services from your website.
Mobile applications require different, more compact navigational aids, and content must fit into a smaller footprint. Mobile websites need "tap to call" options to take advantage of cellular technology, a robust search, flexible menus, and quick access to content. Tables and figures may need to be adjusted or reconfigured to avoid unnecessary "pinching" and scrolling.
When you design and develop your website, you want to reach as many people as possible. People are using a wide variety of devices to access the Web.
When you evaluate your website, or where you want it to be, consider the following website strategies:
Consider the following approaches to design.
If you have an existing website that you do not want to redesign, you can separate the content into 2 site architectures: 1 for desktop computers and 1 for mobile devices. You can target your content specifically for mobile devices, avoiding the complexity of developing device-conditional style sheets and manipulating existing content.
However, you will have to maintain 2 sites and ensure that they are synchronized (where applicable). You have to set up device recognition so that mobile device requests for your website are routed to your mobile (m-dot) site instead.
Also, having 2 sites can impact your SEOSearch Engine Optimization - improving the visibility of search results ranking negatively if content is found on both sites.
Separate templates, optimized for mobile, get rendered whenever somebody visits your site from a mobile device. This approach lets you define a unique mobile experience, without affecting the desktop experience, and create a mobile experience without having to undergo a complete website redesign. Loading of pages is more streamlined when you use separate templates instead of the responsive design approach because only the mobile content gets retrieved from the server; responsive sites often have extra content that is then hidden by CSS rules based upon the current device.
However, you must maintain more than 1 set of templates (for mobile and desktop experiences). Also, the server must detect whether a visitor is using a mobile device before rendering a mobile template, so a list of devices must be kept up-to-date. Fortunately, Ektron is able to keep the device list up to date for you. See Updating the Wireless Universal Resource File.
You should consider a Responsive Web Design (RWDResponsive web design moves and resizes content objects provides to provide an optimal viewing experience on any viewing device.) when you have a high degree of overlap between the site visitor experience and content on many devices.
Responsive design provides an optimal viewing experience for devices of any size by adapting the layout of your pages with CSS3 media queries. The elements on your pages (including any images) must use relative units (percentages or ems) for sizing instead of fixed dimensions (pixels). This enables your site to expand and contract to the viewing size of any device.
Responsive design has a single code base, where other approaches require the use of separate mobile-specific templates to display your pages to mobile devices. While you may identify which of your content is "canonical" in a Separate Mobile Site Design, the singular architecture and repository of a responsive design means that you have one authoritative source for SEOSearch Engine Optimization - improving the visibility of search results leading to higher rankings by search engines. (Multiple websites can dilute your ranking.) It also lets your site visitors use a consistent set of URLUniversal Resource Locators without the issue of directing to the WWW or m(dot) site.
Many traditional websites require a complete redesign and implementation to change to a responsive site. Additionally, a complete redesign may require added time and effort to ensure that the user experience is mobile-friendly. You must weigh the costs of a redesign to gain the benefits of a single code base (long-term maintenance savings, SEO improvements, and so on).
Another issue to consider before creating a responsive website is that entire pages are loaded. If you have a lot of content on a page, it can impact the user experience. By contrast, if your site uses separate mobile templates, you can decide if some of that content should be loaded on certain types of devices.
Using Responsive Frameworks with PageBuilder shows how to work responsive Web design into your PageBuilder pages.
Responsive Web Design + Server Side Components (RESSResponsive Web Design + Server Side Components) has the flexibility of responsive design while providing the granularity of device detection to deliver device-specific components.
Ektron supports the use of RESS by providing tools to display content and assets based on groups of devices, which can be added to your responsive pages. Of course, this responsive aspect means that your site needs to be redesigned, but once redesigned, these tools can provide the best of both approaches.
Using Responsive Frameworks with PageBuilder shows how to work responsive Web design into your PageBuilder pages.
A template is a customized Web page format comprised of objects such as content blocks, list controls, menus, rotating banners, a search object, and videos. How you assemble the objects affects the user experience. Because of the smaller display size, templates for mobile devices may have a single column to eliminate horizontal scrolling, pinching, and zooming. You decide what is practical for each device by creating different templates instead of creating different content. Objects may have to be omitted or replaced with mobile-friendly objects. The following image shows PageBuilder templates for desktop and mobile devices. Note that the mobile template does not include content object 3. See Developing Wireframe Templates for information about creating PageBuilder wireframethe architecture of a Web page containing columns, dropzones, and layout information. templates.
You should use the same dropzonean area on a Web page where you can drag and drop a widget. IDs for both the mobile and desktop templates. Content does not display if a mobile template contains a dropzone ID that the corresponding desktop template does not have.
Ektron can detect specific characteristics of a mobile device, such as the differences between the Android Droid X and Droid 2. These characteristics help you determine how to render the user experience. For example, one device may support Flash technology and another may not.
In any case, you want to ensure that your content on a mobile device is elastic, meaning that it can scale to the various sizes of displays. Use percentages instead of hard-coded pixel sizes for the mobile template. If you set PageBuilder dropzone width to 100%, the normal flow of the objects in the mobile browser cause them to stack from the top to the bottom.
<add key="ek_EnableDeviceDetection" value="true">
account.pb.smartphone.aspx
.Now, if a mobile device user accesses a page which uses that template, the mobile-enhanced template displays the content.
You can preview content in mobile template to ensure the content fits within the screen resolution.
Ektron multi-channel preview lets you ensure that your page is optimized for devices of every size. You can browse your entire site using any preview device.
If you have the toolbar enabled...
Prerequisite
Previewing virtual mobile devices requires an HTML5 CSS3-compliant browserAll browsers are supported EXCEPT for the following versions *and older*: IE 8, Chrome 3 and older, Firefox 3 and older, Safari 3 and older, and Opera 10 and older.. You must also enable the toolbar, for any template you want to use it, by checking the boxes in the Enable Toolbar column at Workarea > Settings > Configuration > Template Configuration.
If you have the toolbar disabled (or do not have an HTML5 CSS3-compliant browserAll browsers are supported EXCEPT for the following versions *and older*: IE 8, Chrome 3 and older, Firefox 3 and older, Safari 3 and older, and Opera 10 and older.)...
Choose the breakpoint you want to preview from the drop down menu. The page displays in the dialog box.
You can set up Smart Forman Ektron-defined Web page that contains XML (hidden from the end user) to display content, and receive, verify, and save user input. configurations to recognize a user's device and, based on that information, display appropriate content. For example, if a user is not using a Smart Phone, show a complex display with rich graphics. If a user is using a Smart Phone, create a simpler presentation of the same fields without graphics. To learn about this capability, see Inserting a Conditional Section.
You can also designate some or all of an HTML form's postback message to be conditional upon a user's device. So, for example, the postback message for Smart Phone users can be much shorter than the message for users who are not using a mobile device. To learn more about this, see Specifying Conditional Text in the Postback Message.
You can accommodate a variety of mobile devices by grouping characteristics, such as display size. You can group devices for standard presentation and add refinements for specific devices. For example, a device configuration may consist of a Smart Phones group (Apple iPhone®, Samsung Galaxy Note™ II, Motorola® Droid RAZR MAXX HD, and so on) and a Tablets group (Apple iPad®, Google Nexus™ 10, Microsoft® Surface™, and so on).
With Ektron, you can group devices by breakpoint, model or operating system. A breakpoint is a screen width at which media queries make changes to the layout. An image breakpoint is the screen width at which you switch from one image file to another.
For example, you can define a group called "Smart Phones" and set a breakpoint of 480 pixels-wide, and a group called "Tablets" and set a breakpoint of 1024 pixels-wide. If an image is loaded at 720 pixels-wide, the image is allowed on devices in the "Tablets" group. (You may have alternate images to display for the "Smart Phones" group. See Applying Adaptive Image Resizing for information about optimizing images for device groups.)
Grouping by model gives you more control over specifications, but it is quicker to group by operating system. You may want to first group by breakpoint, then by operating system, then only define models that do not work properly under an operating system configuration.
To determine which mobile devices to add to your device configurations, review your Analytics reporting to see which mobile devices are browsing your site. To see the Browser and OS report:
The following example shows that Android and iPhone mobile devices have browsed pages. You can create templates and device configurations to improve the experience of these visitors.
Ektron provides 2 default groups by breakpoint (Smart Phones, and Tablets). When you set up breakpoints, images that are subsequently uploaded are created in each of the breakpoint sizes for use on devices that fit the breakpoint criteria. See Also: Applying Adaptive Image Resizing.
Click Create Group. The Group Device by Breakpoint screen appears. The Smart Phones group has a breakpoint of 480 pixels. The graphics to the right of the groups show the devices that fit your criteria. The check boxes under the device images lets you select the devices that you want to show as options on the Device Preview screen of the toolbar. See Editing in Ektron.
NOTE: You can specify new breakpoint values for an existing group on this screen and click Save.
Small Phones
.360
.Click Create Group. The Group Device by OS screen appears.
NOTE: If your Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL) is out of date, a notice appears on the screen. Click Update to update the device information. For more information about WURFL, see Creating a Mobile-Driven Web Experience.
When adding individual devices to a configuration, group devices that share characteristics, such as Flash support and screen resolution. Since you will assign the configuration to a mobile template, make sure that all devices support the template's functionality.
NOTE: If your Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL) is out of date, a notice appears on the screen. Click Update to update the device information. For more information about WURFL, see Creating a Mobile-Driven Web Experience.
My Favorite Phones
.Blackberry
or iPhone
and press Enter.Blackberry
AND iPhone
AND Razr
, first select your device and models from one, then enter another into the search box and select the others. Your selections appear on the right side of the screen.Adaptive Image Resizing resizes images and helps you implement a caching strategy to enhance a user's mobile experience on your site. It includes the following features:
Prerequisite
To enable Adaptive Image Resizing settings, set ek_EnableDeviceDetection to True in
siteroot/web.config
.<add key="ek_EnableDeviceDetection" value="true" />
Some visitors to your website will be on devices that have less-than-optimal bandwidth due to their geographic location, their network, or device limitations. As a result, the website loads slower for the mobile visitor than for the desktop visitor. By optimizing your images for device sizes, you minimize these limitations.
Simply shrinking an image to fit a smaller device may result in an unsatisfactory image. To ensure that your mobile visitors receive the best experience, Ektron’s Mobile Image Selector lets content authors replace the image (with a satisfactory substitute) that gets displayed for visitors on mobile devices of certain sizes. For example, the following images show a "Times Square" article example on a Smart Phone. Authors can swap out the desktop image for an image that renders well on smaller devices; the shrunken image on the left gets replaced by the image on the right.
Adaptive Image Resizing lets every visitor receive the image that is most appropriate based on their device. For example, Smart Phones may receive an image that’s been scaled down to a lower resolution and 480-pixels wide, while the “Desktop” version of the image might be high resolution and 1200-pixels wide.
Image resolution ultimately defines the amount of detail an image holds. If an original image is 1024 x 1024 pixels, there is a significant loss of detail when looking at a scaled-down 24 x 24 thumbnail image. However, a 24 x 24 thumbnail image has a much smaller physical size in KB, which means that it downloads much faster.
IMPORTANT: A delay in loading a page by only 1 second can dramatically impact your conversion rate and deliver a poor customer experience.
If you view a 1024-pixel-wide image on a 320-pixel-wide screen, you cannot see the detail. Downsizing the image to 320 pixels reduces the physical size significantly with no loss of image detail. Similarly, you also can crop a section of the 1024-pixel-wide image to a 320-pixel-wide section with all of its detail.
You want to balance image quality with file size because every millisecond of load-time makes a difference to the experience (and tolerance) of your site visitors.
When you add an image to the Ektron CMS, Ektron creates copies of the image in the sizes specified in the image breakpoint groups, up to the width of the original image.
For example, if you set up 4 image breakpoints at 320, 476, 620 and 768 pixels, when you upload an 1024 x 1600 image called MonaLisa.jpg
, the CMS creates 4 additional images as follows:
/uploadedimages/MonaLisa.jpg MonaLisa.jpg
/uploadedimages/320W_MonaLisa.jpg
/uploadedimages/476W_MonaLisa.jpg
/uploadedimages/620W_MonaLisa.jpg
/uploadedimages/768W_MonaLisa.jpg
If a 400-pixel device calls the Mona Lisa image, the device gets the 476-pixel image scaled to fit the (400-pixel device) container. However, even though you can force an 1024 x 1600 image to fit into a container, creating smaller images drastically reduces the physical size of the image files by several factors of kilobytes that are transferred, significantly speeding up page-load time. Delays in page loading can mean a loss in customer conversions and deliver a poor customer experience.
For information about responsive image selection when you are editing your Web page, see Editing Images in Editing in Ektron.
If you have mobile devices grouped by breakpoints, you must enable groups to create adaptive images when images are uploaded to the library or as assets. Go to Workarea > Settings > Configuration > Mobile Settings > Adaptive Image Settings. The Adaptive Image Settings screen appears. The following example shows the Small Phones group that was added in Adding a Group by Breakpoint.
When you check a box next to a breakpoint group, the screen expands to let you specify maximum width and height for the breakpoint images, and lets you add a file label as a prefix to the image filename. In the following example, uploading Mona_Lisa.jpg
generates SM_Mona_Lisa.jpg
for the Small Phones group, SP_Mona_Lisa.jpg
for the Smart Phones group, and the TB_Mona_Lisa.jpg
for the Tablets group.
Checking boxes for Library and DMS enables adaptive image generation when images are uploaded into these locations.
The Advanced Setting tab of the Adaptive Image Setting screen lets do the following:
To clear both Level 1 and Level 2 cache, click Clear Cache.
Best Practice
Use the following formula to calculate memory usage for Level 2 caching:
Level2CacheItemThresholdKB * Level2CacheSize = total memory used
For example:
256KB*500=128000KB=128MB
of maximum memory used by Level 2 caching.
How Adaptive Image Caching Works
targetTypeID
) is for developers who want to ignore a user's device and choose a specific version of an image. The targetTypeID
string is appended after the question mark (?) on a URL. You can change targetTypeID
to another string in this field.When you add an image to content from the library and click on the image to select it, the Inspector shows the breakpoints and corresponding images on the Advanced tab.
You can replace the image you want by clicking Change and selecting another image from the library.
When responsive images are inserted into the editor, the editor produces HTML similar to the following code to determine which images should be displayed for each breakpoint.
<figure class="ektron-responsive-imageset" title="Mona Lisa" data-ektron-image-src="/uploadedImages/Content/About/ Mona_Lisa.jpg?targetTypeId=Tablets" data-media="/uploadedImages/Content/About/ FP_Mona_Lisa.png?targetTypeID=FeaturePhone" data-media316="/uploadedImages/Content/About/ SM_Mona_lisa.jpg?targetTypeID=Smartphone" data-media768="/uploadedImages/Content/About/ Mona_Lisa.jpg?targetTypeID=Tablets"> <img src="/uploadedImages/Content/About/ Mona_Lisa.jpg?targetTypeID=Tablets" alt="Mona Lisa" /> </figure>
For information about the editor, see Editing in Ektron.
After you enable device detection in web.config
, as new images are added to specified Ektron folders, Ektron automatically creates versions of the image in specified sizes (described in Creating a Mobile-Driven Web Experience).
<add key="ek_EnableDeviceDetection" value="true" />
A new image filename consists of ImageResConfig TypeID_original file name.extension
. For example, if the original image filename is mytest.png
, and it is resized to specifications set in the LowRes ImageResConfig
element, the new filename is LowRes_mytest.png
.
If a mobile visitor views an image that was in Ektron before device detection was turned on, the image may be resized at that time. Ektron creates resized image versions in the same folder as the original image.
If you later view the image on any device with the same resolution range, the saved version is displayed. This practice enhances the performance of your mobile website. However, creating additional image versions also increases the number of files and storage space needed.
Best Practice
When planning an implementation of Adaptive Image Resizing, consider your future space requirements.
If your site visitor is on a mobile device, the geographic location of your site visitor becomes very important information. For example, if a mobile visitor is accessing your site, you can display nearby stores and special promotions. To create a geographically aware Web experience with Ektron, follow these steps.
[siteroot]/workarea/template/map/map.ekml
.To learn more about using geolocation, see the Map server control and Using the Map Server Control.
After finishing the previous steps, use your mobile device (if it has GPS capability) to browse to the template that contains the map; it shows your location at the center of the map. For other mobile devices, the center of the map is the Latitude and Longitude coordinates set by the Map server control. Content locations appear as map pins, and the content list is sorted by distance from the current location (with GPS) or map center.
When a device requests information from a Web server, HTTP headers are passed to the server along with the image URL. The HTTP headers contain information that identifies the type of device that is doing the request. Because new mobile devices are being created every day, it is important for your website to detect these devices when they are available and present the appropriate experience to visitors who use these devices when they visit your site.
Each time a user clicks on the View All Device Groups folder, Ektron determines whether more recent device information is available.