Mobile Design and Development: Practical Concepts and Techniques for Creating Mobile Sites and Web Apps (Animal Guide)
ISBN:9780596155445 read summary

The bulk of this book (say 80%) is a discussion of information architecture retooled for the mobile world. A useful discussion, but it is NOT why I bought a book on mobile development. I expected a book that discussed in great detail, mobile development.

Skip to chapter 11, 'Mobile Web Development' to get a taste. Chapter 12, 'iPhone Web Apps' also has a few nuggets. Chapter 15, the oddly named and placed 'Supporting Devices' touches on setting up a test and dev environment.

Technical details for server configuration, local test/dev environment configuration, dev methods and techniques etc. are absent. This is NOT a technical reference or guide. It IS, a good executive 'summary'.

Also, although it makes every attempt to appear agnostic, the book is clearly iPhone-centric. This caused me to change my rating from two stars to one star.

Many people would pay for the information Brian Fling has assembled here. Project managers, and even clients need to read and digest this book before starting a mobile initiative. You have no idea how gigantic and varied the mobile industry is until you've heard it from Brian Fling.

This is a good book for mobile technology. Easy to read and understand. And the seller sent this book very fast. Very good deal.

Anyone looking to moving into the mobile space as a developer or manager should take the time to read this book. Fling brings a considerable amount of experience to the table and gives an incredible survey of the situation as it exists now. Failing to take into account all the valuable information here would be foolish.

The tone and style are refreshing. Fling doesn't try to be cute or work up a side-line as a comedian. This is just straight out guidance, dealing with real world considerations that keeps things from being too dry.

There isn't much in the way of detailed implementation as this is an overview of the whole landscape. This is what should be read before a project is begun, not somewhere in the middle when code is already being written. Fling makes a great case for mobile web apps and gives some very practical guidance in their creation. It's really the only platform wide enough to fit in the book. Anything else would require an extremely narrow focus that wouldn't fit the rest of the book.

I enjoyed reading this and learned a lot in the process. One can't really ask for more.

Fling is a huge fan of the iPhone and spends a whole chapter describing web development for the iPhone. Since webkit exists in other smart phones, the information is applicable to other platforms for the most part but I would have preferred something less tied to one phone from one vendor. My bias is toward android, but there are plenty of iPhone and Android development books. I can use those once I've moved on to specifics. But this is really a very small issue in relation to the excellent information and presentation in this book.

There is one other issue I almost forgot. There are pie charts in the book, which is black and white. Some of the 'slices' are so close to one another in color that it was pretty much impossible for me to tell where they started and stopped. It doesn't hurt the book too much but needs to be fixed in future editions. Fling explains the charts, so one can infer where things are but that means the charts are not even necessary or helpful.

But if those are the biggest problems with a tech book, it's doing pretty well in my estimation.

A pretty good survey piece; lots of "things to think about", but short on specifics -- prob because the device world is SO fluid. It serves as background, but there's not much to act on.