Developing mobile software greatly differs from coding for desktop PCs. There are multiple mobile platforms around, each with their own hardware and operating system. Every mobile platform puts its own requirements on the visual design of UI. Screens differ in resolutions and color depth, often requiring exotic formats and resolutions for graphical elements. Windows Mobile sets its own requirements, while Symbian phones and mobile devices use different sizes and formats of images. Are you up to the challenge of crafting your own graphics for the variance of handheld devices?
While VGA resolution is used on many modern handheld platforms, 320x240 and lower resolutions are still more common on low-end handheld platforms as well as on many mobile phones. You just can't use desktop-resolution graphics on these platforms, or you'd be wasting precious screen space.
Serious handheld developers need their graphics in a variety of formats, resolutions and color depths to fit the requirements of various handheld platforms. Windows Mobile uses graphics in ICO format, while Symbian requires for BMP or even MBM (Symbian OS multiple bitmap file) format. Other handheld operating systems may have their own requirements as to the format and size of images used in their applications. In either case, you have to provide a variety of sizes of images for the mobile OS to select the most appropriate icon size for the current zoom state of the user interface. If you won't supply one or more sizes, the handheld device will scale icons dynamically, which results in a significant loss of visual quality, clarity and legibility of the graphics. The required icon sizes and resolutions are specific to the operating system, but the more you have the better.
As you see, having your graphics available in different formats, sizes and color resolutions is not a benefit but a mere requirement for just entering the market. Are you up to the challenge of making your graphics to the strict specifications of the many handheld device and operating system manufacturers?
Luckily, you don't have to! It is now easy to enhance the appearance of your handheld applications with properly crafted icons without having to make them to order or drawing them in-house. Perfect Mobile Icons are available in a number of common sizes used in mobile systems, including 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, and 48x48 pixels, and are supplied in 16 and 256 colors, while providing 32-bit True Color versions for high-end VGA-resolution mobile devices and desktop synchronization tools. With respect to the different format requirements of PDA system manufacturers, each icon is supplied in Windows Icon (ICO), Bitmap (BMP), GIF, and PNG formats.
Perfect Mobile Icons are a matching set of over 50 icons crafted in common gamma and sharing common color and drawing style. Your mobile software will look professional and consistent on any platform. Just visit Perfect Mobile Icons page to see full-size online preview of these icons!
About the Author:
Since SibCode's founding in 2005 and as of 2007, Dmitry Costenco develops web sites. He works for quality web interface, which will help to web surfers.
