Electric Proms Goes Mobile
The Electric Proms is an event that focuses on doing things differently. This year, we did something new to innovate for mobile.
Rather than sticking with our usual, one-size-fits-all model for mobile browser pages, we implemented a level of device detection to serve different versions of the site optimised for specific devices.
We'd like to have been able to do this for all devices, but there are so many of them, with vast differences in terms of what they can support technically. So we did some analysis of the handsets which most often visit our mobile pages for radio and music to find which devices we should focus our efforts on.
What we discovered was quite surprising.
High-end phones such as the iPhone and Nokia NSeries made up almost half of all our mobile web traffic (quite different to what we see when looking at top pan-91Èȱ¬ devices).
The iPhone and Nokia NSeries are capable of supporting some enhanced services within the browser and have screens large enough to render some nice graphics too - not to mention the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer service which is available on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Breaking out of our usual templates for these devices gave us the opportunity to find new ways to make a mobile site easy to use, and to take steps to reduce end-user costs when paying per MB for data access. To this end we implemented some javascript elements which allow the user to pull information into a page template, without having to reload the surrounding graphical elements.
We were also able to incorporate information pulled dynamically from our programmes database. This shows "next up" schedule information (for TV, radio and red button), automatically updated throughout the event. Most importantly, we've been analysing usage from these pages and dynamic elements in detail to inform our future plans for mobile.
The designers (Sacha Sedriks and Stephen Robertson) and the developer (Daniel Moll) who produced these pages have never worked specifically on mobile before, but they've done a tremendous job. The work they've done, with support from some the 91Èȱ¬'s mobile veterans from the FM&T Mobile Group, will benefit all our future work for mobile platforms. While I'm naming those that have contributed, a special mention to Mobile Producer Jo Bellingham who put together the standard pages for other devices and has been updating JSON feeds, SSSIs, image galleries and more throughout the event.
To see what we've created, point your mobile browser to /mobile/eproms and if you're using an iPhone, iPod Touch, NSeries or ESeries Nokia, you'll see the site optimised for your device.
James Simcock is Executive Producer, Mobile, 91Èȱ¬ Audio & Music Interactive.
Comment number 1.
At 9th Sep 2009, felicioo wrote:Thank you.. sesli sohbet
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