The Rise of Mobile
In her annual report of Internet Trends, Mary Meeker of KPCB provides an enlightening assessment of the growth of mobile internet usage at http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-2014-05-28-14-pdf. See slide #9. She pegs mobile usage at 25% of total internet usage with 14% year/year growth.
In this environment, robust support for mobile devices is obviously important to online news publishers and that's the reason that our October release of Bondware (4.33) focuses squarely on delivering new mobile capabilities.
Desktop vs Mobile
The latest release of Bondware puts control of the mobile viewing experience on par with the traditional desktop viewing of Bondware sites. Our mobile support is still evolving, but as of this release:
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mobile templates provide full control of the mobile user layout/experience.
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publishers can easily create and sell mobile ad positions
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editors can easily select content sections that will be displayed on mobile devices
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navigation menus are automatically adjusted for mobile use
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login process has been stream-lined and optimized for mobile users
Digital Editions on Mobile
You may recall that Bondware includes a feature that allows you to upload a multi-page PDF document and turn that into an online page flipper application that works great on desktop, tablet or mobile phones. This release includes a 2nd generation digital edition viewer that has been optimized for mobile viewing.
News publishers will find that they can usually create these digital editions from the files they already send to the printer. Since it is an accurate reproduction of the print product, all ads/advertisers are included. And, as you might expect, the digital editions can be free to the public or behind a paywall.
Other Changes in this Release
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Improved display of pending members for sites with moderated membership
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Publication date fixes for scheduled articles
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Various minor bug fixes
Last Words
We hope you enjoy this release as much as we enjoyed building it. As usual, you can learn more about the features described here in our online knowledge base at http://www.bondware.com/help.
