Presenter: Lyza Danger Gardner
Time: 14:30 – 15:30, Friday 30 October

After many frightening, late nights of desperate hacking and careful attempts at soothing bewildered customers, mobile Web agency Cloud Four has come to some sanity-saving conclusions about mobile web development. We suffered the pain so (with luck) you won’t have to: here are our best recommendations for how to make stuff work when it won’t, and when to throw up your hands and move on (without losing your self-respect).

When does it make sense to demand perfection in our designs and implementations, and where do we draw the line? How important is it that we float that image exactly two pixels to the left of the logo on some ancient BlackBerry? Then again, what if that BlackBerry belongs to the CEO?

This session will look at the perfection problem of the mobile Web from two perspectives. First: Tricks and tips on creating a sane and flexible strategy from the very beginnning—and how to make your customer think it’s super great and not just a wonky compromise. Then: Quirks and nonsense we’ve discovered during implementation (both server- and client-end) and how to slay the demons triumphantly.

Lyza is a co-founder and director of development at Portland, Ore.-based mobile Web strategy and development firm Cloud Four. Cloud Four was founded in 2007 by a small group of seriously web-savvy folks who wanted to push the envelope on mobile web technology (we said “web!” when everyone was saying “apps! apps! apps!”).

Lyza has 15 years’ experience in all things web and is currently co-authoring “Head First Mobile Web” for O’Reilly publishing with fellow Cloud Four co-founder Jason Grigsby.