Speaking from personal experience, you don t have to specifically use certain framework. I use asp.net and simple JavaScript to design mobile sites and haven t had many problems.

If you want to target broad range of devices and don t want to bother with different views front-ends you need to make sure you are not using extensive JavaScript as many low end devices don t support JavaScript at all. For example jQuery works fine on webkit browsers but it doesn t on pocket ie.

I haven t had any experience with MS Web App Toolkit but it looks like requires JavaScript support and I doubt it would work on many phones.

IF your main target is mobile but want desktop browsers to access your site you could just change css to make fonts larger so it would look nice on PC

My motto on mobile design is keep it as simple as possible.

I think ASP.NET MVC and MobileWebApplicationToolkit is the best choice for developing mobile sites using asp.net.

I would consider WURFL better then mdbf (it is used in mobileWebAppToolKit) because the last release will be in August.

I´m not expert in JS in mobile sites, I try avoid it for maximize compatibility. But I think Senda is big, more than 200KB. Maybe you could look xui-js or other specific mobile js framework. Anyway I think you are doing good decision.

Hi and thanks for your feedback. I m not sure you ve gotten the right idea about the MS Web App Toolkit - it s a very simple component that s specifically designed for working with a large number of different mobile devices (67 I believe): http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WebAppToolkitMobile

My understanding of it is simply that it:

• determines which device type / browser made the request by using an in-built database of devices

• provides a component for use within your ASP.NET MVC 2 code so the request is routed to a suitable View for rendering on the calling device

I was going to include the Sencha Touch libraries so I could write a single View (for each page) that could be rendered on multiple different mobile devices. Thus when the Web App Toolkit determines that a Sencha Touch-supported device has made the request, the call is routed to the appropriate View that uses the Sencha Touch libraries. For requests from desktop browsers, the call would be routed to another View, and for requests from all other devices, I could either use another View again or, as you say, inject a simplified stylesheet with scaled up fonts.

Hope that s a clear-enough explanation!

[Sencha person] Sencha Touch is an application framework that targets Android & iOS devices only right now, and will support RIM & Nokia devices when they come out with high quality webkit based browsers later this year/next year, as they ve promised.

We don t have a progressive enhancement/degradation philosophy in Touch, so there is no fallback behavior. If you absolutely need progressive enhancement you should check out jQTouch, which is a jQuery plugin. But even jQTouch requires a sane javascript/CSS capability in the browser, and many existing phones simply don t have this. Cf, a majority of just ordinary web-sites don t render properly in the current RIM browser.

Ergo, if you want 100% phone coverage, you ll have to dumb down your "app" to something that even WAP phones with limited HTML capabilities can display. But it won t be much of an app by that stage.