Sessions at Breaking Development 2011: Nashville on Wednesday 14th September

In this hands-on workshop you’ll discover how to use your web development skills to build applications for mobile platforms including iPhone, Google Android, Blackberry and webOS. You will learn how to use PhoneGap, an open source mobile development framework, to create cross platform mobile applications with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Get the tools and experience you need to build app store ready mobile applications using just your web development steez.

In this workshop you will learn to:

• Set up your development environment
• Compile for multiple platforms
• Run code in an emulator
• Debug your HTML and JavaScript
• Access native APIs, including location, camera, accelerometer, contacts, and more via JavaScript
• Optimize your JavaScript for mobile devices
• Build a mobile application that runs offline, uses CSS transforms and leverages JS libraries like jQuery Mobile

Each day, device manufacturers ship more than a million touch-screen phones that enable new ways for people to interact with the Web. But when they get to your Web site or application-what kind of experience will people with these devices have? Will they be delighted by your mobile Web experience or frustrated?

In this workshop on Web design best practices for modern mobile devices, Luke Wroblewski will detail how to think about and design for Web organization, actions, inputs, and layout on mobile. Through presentations, collaborative sessions, and lots of examples, you?ll learn how to:

• Use "content first/navigate second" organizational structures optimized for small screens and mobile use cases.
• Design for increasingly prevalent touch interactions with appropriate targets and gestures.
• Construct forms and input fields to make input on mobile easier and more frequent.
• Manage layouts across multiple devices with ruthless editing, device classes, and responsive/flexible designs.
• And more…

Armed with these design best practices and principles, you can make sure people have a great mobile Web experience whenever they visit your site.

Armed with newfound theory, ideas, and excitement about the mobile horizon, you're now itching to write some code and build something special. This workshop will drop straight down into HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to create an application you can take home with you.

We'll be using Sencha Touch, an easy way to create native-looking experiences with web technology. We'll use a variety of user interface controls, geolocation, JSON & CORS-based data feeds, a client-side MVC architecture, and Sass-based theming - to create a mobile app you can be proud of.

Handheld apps that work by touch require you to design not only how your pixels look, but how they feel in the hand. This workshop explores the ergonomic challenges and interface opportunities for designing mobile touchscreen apps. Learn how fingers and thumbs turn desktop conventions on their heads, requiring you to leave behind familiar design patterns. The workshop presents nitty-gritty “rule of thumb” design techniques that together form a framework for crafting finger-friendly interface metaphors, affordances, and gestures for a new generation of mobile apps and websites that inform and delight.

• Discover ergonomic guidelines for comfortable tapping and what that means for the visual layout of mobile apps and websites.
• Devise visual metaphors that invite touch and create emotional attachment, while providing subtle cues for how your interface works.
• Learn why buttons are a hack. Tap into direct manipulation of content to encourage exploration in ways that traditional controls cannot.
• Design gesture interactions, and learn techniques to help people discover unfamiliar gestures on their own.
• Train in gesture jiujitsu, the dark art of using awkward gestures for "defensive design" and protecting against accidental mistaps.
• Explore the psychology behind screen rotation and the opportunities and pitfalls it creates for designers.
• Find out how the form and context of tablets create different interface requirements from phone handsets.