/Culture/ What the Apple iPad means for web designers
28/01/2010 | Filed under Discover > Culture
Apple’s tablet is now in the wild, dubbed iPad. It’s essentially a giant iPod touch, with a 1024-by-768 9.7-inch display. Plenty of information about the device is available on Apple’s website, but what will it mean for web designers? Here are five things you need to know about Apple’s device when creating your next online masterpiece.
1. It runs Safari
The good news for web designers is that iPad runs the same operating system as Apple’s other handhelds, which means its browser is Safari—albeit the mobile version. In the main, this shares the same guts as the desktop version, which is one of the most advanced browsers around, with excellent support for open standards. Get your site up and running in Safari for Mac or PC and it’ll work reasonably well on iPad—with some caveats, as explained in the following three points.
2. It doesn’t run Flash
Apple’s clearly not going to budge regarding Flash. The company recently noted that plug-ins—‘plug-ins’ clearly being a euphemism for ‘Flash’—were the largest cause of crashes on the Mac, and Flash can cause performance problems, which are more evident on lower-powered devices such as iPad. Furthermore, Apple increasingly likes control over code run on its devices, and unless it buys Adobe it won’t have that over Flash. The upshot: if you want web animations on iPad, use open standards. If you want entirely Flash websites to work on iPad, create a dimension-jumping machine, because it’s not going to happen in this world any time soon. (See also: any other third-party plug-ins.)
3. It’s a giant iPod touch
Although iPad has an optional keyboard dock, it’s still primarily a touchscreen device. To that end, you touch the screen to interact with something. That might seem obvious, but many web designers use a lot of hover effects for important things (including mega menus), which work poorly or not at all on these kinds of devices. Also, fingers aren’t as accurate as mouse pointers, and so links and targets must be sized accordingly. However, iPad retains iPhone’s ability to pinch-zoom, and it has a larger screen, so you’re not too limited.
4. It’s hugely usable
One of the major plusses of iPhone and iPod touch is usability. A two-year-old can use the devices without any major problem, and there are thousands of apps that you can download for free. Effectively, Safari is just one app of many, meaning your website is in direct competition with a bunch of other content. In other words, if your site isn’t as usable as at least a very good download from the App Store, you’re stuffed.
5. It could be the future
We suspect by the time you read this, a million articles online will be claiming iPad will be Apple’s biggest disaster since the Cube. But they said the same about iPhone, which sold 8.75 million units in the last quarter alone. With Apple’s iPad pricing surprisingly sensible (the low-end model is $499—about the same as an unlocked iPhone 3G), and with the company clearly gunning for the home user who doesn’t require advanced computing, this device could be a major hit. Also, where Apple leads, others follow. Expect Apple to be rapidly aped by a number of copycat competitors, ripping off the interface and producing their own Apple-like touchscreen devices. Either way, web designers need to be mindful of iPad, because if Apple discovered one thing, it’s that iPhone (and iPod touch) users do a lot of web browsing—and the same will be true for iPad.
Hands on: Apple iPad review at TechRadar.com
Bookmark with:
Comments
Karn Broad / 28/01/2010 / 10:13 / http://www.webkarnage.net
That's pretty spot on there. I'll not be getting one in the next few years (or maybe at all) but I bet many will.
I'm not surprised Apple won't support Flash. If you wanted to reduce the battery life by two thirds you'd only have to support Flash and then put in the address of a Flash heavy website, or even one with just a Flash banner!
Maybe Adobe need to think about making their stuff run efficiently on the Mac? It's about as inefficient as it gets on the Mac, Flash. The CPU percentage it uses for what it does is appalling. Given how efficient all the other code is on Apple products, it really stands out.
Only games that are lazily ported from the Windows PC platform (making them far less efficient than on the PC) run it close. The difference is Flash is quite bad on Windows too!!
with best regards,
Karn.
zabaman / 28/01/2010 / 11:04
Amazing piece of kit, as a web developer with an iphone Most of my sites run as they should on iphone so i guess the same is true for ipad. It truly is a mobile office device, business will snap this up, but they need a basic word processor on there, then it would really eat away at their laptop sales.
Brent Mitchell / 28/01/2010 / 11:43 / http://www.balancedi.com
I suspect iPad users will browse in the 768x1024 orientation and only turn to the 1024x768 orientation if the content "appears" interesting enough.. As frequently is the case, it's important to have large meaningful headers and subheaders so the reader can easily scan them.
Nice article. Thanks.
Dave H / 02/02/2010 / 07:25
I really hope people don't make websites "for the iPad". If people make good websites, they will work on any device.
1. True.
2. Non-flash content should always degrade gracefully anyway, so this shouldn't be anything new. I don't believe Apple have left out Flash (and other 3rd party plugins like Java, Windows Media, etc) for any technical reasons. Browsers since IE4 have supported plugins without problems. Chrome has shown that even a crashing plugin won't take down a browser. About 1 in 3 smart phones since 2006 have shipped with some version of Flash. I believe the only reason they don't support Flash is control.
3. As a touch screen device, it is harder to control than using a mouse, but if you make your sites accessible anyway, you won't have any problems. It may be worth turning off all JavaScript effects for all mobile user agents, as they are unlikely to have to same control as a computer user.
4. Mostly true, but what's more usable, Googling for something and landing directly on a badly designed page with the information you want, or loading up the app store, searching for a suitable app, installing it then running it?
5. I believe it will be the future, but only a small part of it. It seems as though Apple are dominating the mobile market, because they are big in the USA and because their brand is exciting. There are ~4bn people in Africa, China and India whose future is very unlikely to include anything like the iPad. In these places it's common to use a low end "dumbphone" to access the net over 2G and be limited to a few MB a month. If you're developing a site with a global reach, don't ignore 2/3 of your audience.
Anna Green / 02/02/2010 / 16:43 / http://www.crearedesign.co.uk
I don't think the ipad will be as successful as the iphone, the mobile phone is a device that everybody already needs in there day to day life, as is a laptop. What apple did was take these already successful devices and make them better and most importantly desirable as a fashion accessorize. The Ipad only really has one element of this equation, its fashionable. Does it fulfill a need that anyone of these other devices can not? I don't think so. Also the consumers that this device appeals too are already going to have the ipod, an iphone and an Apple laptop, it would be ludicrous to then buy the ipad on top of these things. I just don't think that the market is there. But hey im open to being wrong so lets wait and see.
Michael / 05/02/2010 / 18:23
I'm not happy that Flash is not supported again.
It's just Apple being over the top control freaks. It kind of reminds me of AOL browsers years go when AOL controlled what their users could see - that didn't last, and they lost a lot of business as a result. I still wont use them on principle. If Apple don't give me what I want then I'll not use them either.
Tim / 08/02/2010 / 15:02
As an existing iPhone user, I am surprisingly glad that Apple still do not support Flash, even though it is very frustrating when landing on a heavy Flash site resulting in not being able to do anything. Reason for this? If iPad does become a huge success, which I believe it will, the pressure will be on Designers to optimise their content to display accordingly. Flash was a huge leap forward in terms of user interaction and aesthetics, but now is almost becoming outdated, with free-ware rivals offering sturdy alternatives.
Reducing the amount of plug-ins can only be an advantage, whoever the user.
There's a lot of comments similar to "Pointless gadget", "A product with no purpose" and "Over engineered" dotted around on forums such as this although a very high percentage of regular browsers feel they must have one, for whatever reason, and will inevitably give in to temptation especially at the starting price they are asking for. Commutes to and from work, relaxing at home or waiting for your GP, not really a time to boot up a laptop for most. But turning on an iPad, more than likely on standby anyway, very plausible. With 3G networking promising huge connectivity in the majority of the UK (my area still quite poor) this product may spark a dramatic change in the way we surf.
fanta / 11/02/2010 / 15:59
Probably it is "Pointless gadget" or "A product with no purpose" now, but imagine where developing this idea can take us, it is just one of the steps it has to go through to become something great, imagine that it supports Photoshop and Illustrator and instead of using tablets you can draw directly on a screen :D Only then it will actually mean something for designers
Martyn / 12/02/2010 / 14:55 / http://www.webdesign-gm.co.uk
After the release of the iPad I was slightly disappointed with device, I think because so much hype had surrounded the product everyone was expecting bigger and better than what was actually released however that's not to say it's not a really good addition to the apple family and with what I consider to be quite a low price tag.
My one big gripe with the product is no support of flash. This is going to cause massive problems throughout our industry if it does take off in to the same scale as the iphone. This is a step back not forward in my opinion.
Great product but I think a bit irresponsible for not supporting flash.
Dan / 15/02/2010 / 04:46
Its can never run a beautiful flash site like this: www.canv-as.com !
David whitehouse / 20/02/2010 / 09:21 / http://Www.inlifedesign.com
Great read, also missed a few other pointers like using jscript touch flow style galleries and magazine layout navigation. More details on my blog post on similar subject here :) http://www.inlifedesign.co.uk/web-design-for-touch-screen-ipad-and-tablet-computers/
rbrill / 28/04/2010 / 22:35 / http://www.brillcreative.co.uk
The problem with the ipad is its size. I don't think it will continue to have the same level of appeal as the iphone has simply because it isn't as portable.
Ken / 27/05/2010 / 10:39 / http://www.downeastwebdesign.com
Dell is also coming with similar kind of device
Alan / 27/06/2010 / 19:01 / http://www.webdesigncompany-uk.com
Interesting article. Thanks. You're asking the very same thing that led me to this blog posting via a google search: where is the authoring environment for the iPad?
Martin / 06/07/2010 / 00:01 / http://www.redolawebdesign.co.uk
The UK user base is going to be too small in the UK for the iPad to be a concern - I think the it's a much bigger issue for those targetting the American market, and I doubt sales in the UK are going to be anything like the iPhone - it's a niche, prestige device and not something I expect to see on the train every morning. Following the usual good rules of design should be enough. It just wouldn't be cost effective to design with the iPad specifically in mind except in response to a particular request, as there are enough browsers, resolutions and devices to contend with already. It's up to the iPad to fit the web, not vice versa.
My view is: the web should not have to change to fit the device - the device should be able to cope with the web. If we have to design and develop for every desktop browser, monitor resolution, Android phone and tablet, and the iPhone and iPad and God knows what else, I'll probably run away and become a postman.
Flash is no longer an issue, and I believe will soon be used only for video, the more out-there sites like Jim Carrey's, and sites for new movie releases. It was slowly dying out before Steve Jobs declared war, and I can't see it making a comeback.
Dorset Web Designer / 21/07/2010 / 16:12 / http://www.webdesignshowroom.co.uk
The UK user base and take up of Apples new product has surprised everyone. Of course, the iPhone will always outsell it because the iPad is a more niche product.
The lack of Flash support really doesn't bother a web designer like me because I moved away from flash to JQuery back in 2007 which means all of the websites I design look great on the iPad.
