Website Optimization Tips for Android Browser?

Question

I'm looking for tips, tricks, and resources on optimizing website design for an Android browser.

I am creating an Android application and some features will be available through the web interface.

Answer 1

I rely on two elements to optimize sites for mobile browsers (especially Android and iPhone):

Meta Tags: HandheldFriendly and viewport

I usually want pages to not have a page width of 800 to 900 pixels, since the Android and iPhone browsers set it by default. So that the page width is the same as the width of the device, I set the following meta tags:

<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="true" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, height=device-height, user-scalable=no" /> 

CSS Media Requests

I adapt the design to the width of the page. For example, the presence of two columns for large screens and 1 column for small screens and printing. Thus, I include further css-include with the media in the main css main file:

 @import url(style-screen.css) screen; @import url(style-small.css) print, handheld; @import url(style-large.css) screen and (min-width: 801px); @import url(style-small.css) screen and (max-width: 800px); 

Answer 2

I found that there were a lot to add these two meta tags to my site:

 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" /> <meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True" /> 

Here is more information about them: http://learnthemobileweb.com/2009/07/mobile-meta-tags/

Answer 3

For jQuery, there is a version optimized for mobile browsers: http://jquerymobile.com/

Answer 4

dev.opera has some articles, but not for Android, but for mobile websites in general. For example:

Making small devices looks great

Design and development of mobile websites in the real world

Answer 5

Like all mobile web pages, all you can do is fly agaric as you can.

Answer 6

I do not know any decent resources for Android, but I would not become too crazy in JavaScript. If Android is something like an iPhone, the (current) JavaScript performance will be much worse than you could use on desktop computers.