Transcript MobileIsTheNewCoolx

Mobile is the New Cool
HJUG - Wednesday March 30th, 2011
We Are Hiring
• full time, interns
• Relocation compensation, sponsorships, etc
• HQ in Newton, MA (outside of Boston)
Andrew Charkin ([email protected])
Mobile Engineer
TripAdvisor, LLC
Proprietary & Confidential
1
Who is TripAdvisor? And what’s with the owl?
• TripAdvisor is the world’s most popular & largest travel community with..
• 40 million unique monthly visitors
• 20 million registered members
• 40 million reviews and opinions
• Present in 28 countries
• TripAdvisor Mobile Site and Apps
• 5 million unique monthly visitors
• We hit 1 million unique monthly visitors the month after we launched
• Same global coverage
• Native apps on a variety of platforms
• iOS (iPad app reached #1 in more than 50 countries)
• Android
• Nokia Ovi
• HP/Palm webOS
… and our mobile site only launched 15 months ago (12/7/2009)!
How did we get there so fast?
Proprietary & Confidential
2
What is a Hybrid app?
• Mobile web app
• HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Quick to launch and update
• No access to low level features (camera, accelerometer, etc.)
• Easier to track metrics
• Native app
• Java (Android)
• Higher development cost across multiple platforms
• Has access to lower level features
• Tougher to track metrics
Proprietary & Confidential
3
What is a Hybrid app?
• Hybrid Apps combine the best of both worlds
• Basic building blocks in HTML, CSS, JS displayed in a web view
• Build features leveraging those low level APIs natively
• Quick(er) to launch & update most features
• Easy(er) to track metrics
Proprietary & Confidential
4
Hybrid App Strategy
• With a hybrid app you are free to implement whatever works best
• Choose the right tool for the job!
• Use simple HTML, CSS, JS to build the simple stuff
• Use HTML5 to build more complicated features and push them out
cross-platform
• Use native code for the most complicated/low level features
Photo viewer
built with
DHTML/JS
Entire page
built with HTML
& CSS
Photo upload
built natively
Proprietary & Confidential
5
Photo viewer & Photo upload
Proprietary & Confidential
6
Android Quirks we’ve experienced
Proprietary & Confidential
7
Problem: fragmentation
• Types of fragmentation:
• OS version: 1.5, 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, … 3.0
• Phone carrier: Verizon, Sprint, At&t, etc
• Phone manufacturer: HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc
• Screen size: ldpi, mdpi, hdpi
• Solution:
• deviceanywhere.com
• Get different devices
Proprietary & Confidential
8
Problem: z-index
• Z index is broken on all android OS’s except for 3.0
Honeycomb
• Solution:
• Don’t use overlays on web pages
• Trigger an onfocus before onclick to block any
onclicks behind the overlay
Proprietary & Confidential
9
Problem: Won symbol?
• Android has all the currency symbols except for the
won
• Solution:
• Use a W (strikethrough if you’re feeling fancy)
Proprietary & Confidential
10
Questions?
Andrew Charkin ([email protected])
Mobile Engineer
Proprietary & Confidential
TripAdvisor, LLC
11
“We are hiring!” plug
• Hiring like crazy!
• Lots of interesting mobile projects in the pipeline
• Lots of interesting social projects in the pipeline (what could you do with
1.2 billion geographic place pins from our Facebook users?)
• If you want to hear more about Facebook and TA come to the talk at
Rice tomorrow (6pm Huff house room 107)
Proprietary & Confidential
12