Web browsers on smart mobile devices: A gap analysis on the state of the art

In recent years, we have seen an accelerated development of mobile devices in terms of hardware capabilities, navigation techniques and physical design. Today users are gradually shifting towards choosing a smart mobile device as their preferred device. The technologically advanced capabilities that current smart mobile devices possess have spawned a plethora of engaging applications that are attractive and effective in their usefulness and usability. In contrast, the web browser, which can be considered one's personal gateway to the World Wide Web, has not transformed to keep pace with the technology advancements of smart mobile devices in order to create a better experience to the user. All of these browsers are built on top of the same visualization techniques and layouts used by the desktop oriented web browsers. This is not the ideal form of presentation for a smart mobile device. The underlying issue is that the majority of generic websites have not been designed to cater to the relatively smaller mobile device screens. Web browsers for mobile devices have not been able to effectively address this issue. This has created a significant user experience gap between web browsing applications and the smart mobile device capabilities. In this paper, we have presented a gap analysis framework for smart mobile device web browsers in which we have analysed the aforementioned issue from different perspectives. With this framework, we intend to pin down a set of guidelines for a mobile browser that would lead to a better presentation of generic web sites.