What's the best way to learn how to develop a webpage for cellphone?

Hi there, I'm a new college graduate and currently looking for a webdesign/development job.

When I browse job advertisements, I always come across many ads that says something like "Mobile apps developer needed" or "cross-browser for Android and iPhone".

However, I don't even know what the best language to learn for the purpose is.
Should I even learn a new language?

I have heard there are some frameworks that let me create a website for mobile browsers using only html, css, and javascript(or jQuery maybe).
Should I take that way to go about mobile site development??
I'm confused about how I can learn mobile site development.

I have created a couple of website so far for normal browsers on normal screens like FF or IE.
I know HTML4.01, CSS2, a little bit about javascript and jQuery, I also know some PHP(I can create forms and carry info between pages and databases to create simple web applications.)

I will appreciate any help.

Thank you.

For the most part your languages will be the same across all of these platforms. however, their is a difference between mobile website developer and an app developer.

First you will want to set some meta settings in refference to your viewport specific to the device you are targeting. Other than that your other concerns will be with scripting languages, especially hover over events.

Mobile sites are all the rage right now.
Problem is that they look bad on tablets.

You could always push the boat out and develop a site that displays different for Mobile, Tablet and Desktop.

I'm sure that'd help you land jobs at interview

typically you would deliver the same webpage for a tablet as you would a computer Just use your viewport settings to make sure your zoom is set correctly. Then if you choose to you can develop a second simple mobile page and deliver this to phones using php.

however, with today's phones you can serve them the regular version as well. I mean i leave my user-client settings to tell sites i am a computer on my phone to avoid being served those retarded mobile pages.

Though I'm not a pro at designing or developing mobile websites, yet would like to recommend you running a check after you are done developing a site for mobile devices. Please refer : validator.w3.org/mobile/

You might also want to try testing the sites in - browserstack.com, it offers 100+ browsers to test your websites.

This should give you a list of errors that the tools fetched with reference to your website coding and development. This should ease your efforts of developing an ideal website for handheld device platforms.

Okay, I didn't even know what the view point is but I think I can figure that out.

Thanks.

Yeah once I overcome this problem, I'm hoping to get close to job interview.

I didn't know I can just serve normal webpage for desktop screen to mobile screen.

Is that only for newer android and i-phones??

All of these smart phones have modern web browsers. The only ones that need a mobile standards page is symbian based phones. Now that said Each OS has some quirks with websites like IOS can not run flash and android has some lacking in their javascript support.

copy and past the "viewport" meta tag below onto your website:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, height=device-height">

This renders the page correctly based on the screen resolution of the device being used and allows the user to zoom in and out if they need to. Hope this helps!

Thank you very much.
You are legend.

even though you're off to a good start with Html4.01, it would be good to brush up to HTML5 as it would look good on the resume. Even though most clients would barely know the functional differences.

yeah, that's true.

I tried to study with Lynda.com. But I was too busy to keep doing.

And I also think many of clients wouldn't know what html 5 is lol

Okay.


yeah that makes sense.


Thanks.