Even more mobile. Rambler-Mail for smartphones

    image

    In the spring, having launched the new Rambler-Mail , we began to develop optimized versions for various mobile devices. First, we updated the version for very simple push-button phones. The second step was the optimization of Mail for smartphones and tablets (https://mail-pda.rambler.ru/).



    Five-minute PR: What have we improved?

    - The speed of the Mail has increased.
    - Mail was optimized for working with touch-screens of smartphones.
    - Now you can work with files attached to letters.

    And now about the inner kitchen.

    The main tasks that we faced were to take into account the needs of the widest possible audience and provide easy access to Mail from any device. At the same time, the mobile version should work quickly and comply with the visual standards of the web version of Mail and a mobile device at the same time.

    The main problem that we quite predictably encountered was support for the entire variety of devices and browsers. The second problem is the speed of the version in these conditions.

    iOS turned out to be the most predictable of all platforms: in fact, it is one web engine with many shells, which greatly simplifies debugging. Although there are pitfalls. And if we found a bug (for example, the notorious caching of POST requests on iOS6.0 without forcing Cache-Control: no-cache in the header), then its solution worked for all browsers at the same time.

    In the same Android 3 main engines: WebKit, Gecko and Presto. In addition to a wide variety of OS versions, Android also surprises with the behavior of interface elements - the same controls may differ not only externally. For example, native controls work differently. But the most difficult moment, in our opinion, was scrolling - mobile browsers are slowly working with relative positioning. As a result, the most undemanding to resources when scrolling turned out to be a regular table.

    Summing up the layout experience in this project, there are three “nots”:

    - Do not use relative positioning;
    - Do not use RGBA values;
    - Do not use non-native scroll (unfortunately, we did not immediately realize this “not” and we still have to go back to the system one).

    One way or another, we coped with the problems and will use this experience in future developments. We hope that users will enjoy the new mobile mail, and will be glad to offer development proposals.

    Also popular now: