22nd September MoMoEdi: Practical Mobile Web

[Geoff Ballinger]

The apps vs web debate has meandered on for a number of years now, complicated of course by the various hybrid app frameworks we heard about in the June event.

There are are clearly many potential benefits from deploying a service using a mobile web app or site, but there are also practical challenges, and one of the largest is simply how long it takes a modern web page to load over the mobile network.

In a recent talk Jon Arne Sæterås presented test data showing the average time to load google.com on mobile was 10.2 seconds, and that loading apple.com used 1.41% of the battery life on his test handset.

To help us understand how to deal with practical challenges like this our speakers will be:

* Michael Ewins of iWin: "5 steps toward faster web sites and html5 games"

There is little point in building cool web site features or HTML5 games for our customers if they take far too long to load. In this talk I will share 5 practical steps in web page performance and the impact of these improvements on our products.

Michael Ewins is VP of Engineering at iWin Scotland (http://www.iwin.com/) and has recently led the development of a HTML5 gaming platform for mobile, tablet, and PC. Michael has spent the last 25 years developing software for ecommerce, mobile, gaming, digital video, and publishing.

* Richard Lennox of Skyscanner: "Mobile web at Skyscanner"

While much of the attention wrt Skyscanner's mobile activities have focussed on their innovative apps they are also working on mobile web. Richard will tell us a little about why that is as well as some of the challenges they have faced.

Richard is Senior Architect at Skyscanner (http://www.skyscanner.net/).

As usual we will finish with an open discussion session followed by a networking reception with wine.

I am delighted that Skyscanner have agreed to host this event in the events space in their headquarters at Quartermile One:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Quartermile+One%2C+15+Lauriston+Place%2C+EH3+9EN%2C+Edinburgh%2C+gb

We will kick off at 6.30pm and please do arrive promptly since it may not be possible gain access if you are late.

This is a free event but places are limited so pre-registration is required via:

http://momoedisep14.eventbrite.co.uk

Twitter hashtag #MoMoEdi

This event is kindly supported by the Skyscanner and deltaDNA.

[Geoff Ballinger]

Thanks to everybody who came along on Monday to listen and then contribute to a very active discussion at the end. I didn't take a precise headcount but it was definitely north of 50!

Michael has kindly made his presentation available via slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/ewinsmi/5-steps-to-faster-web-sites-and-html5-games

Geoff.