If you are at all interested in developing web apps in the future, it is important you understand the increasing role played by mobile devices, and how to develop apps fitting their capabilities. I'm saying this not to scare you into buying my book (though I hope that you are currently reading your purchased copy), but to underscore the fact that mobile computing will play an increased role in the lives of every connected person.

To appreciate the growth in mobile usage, one should consider the iPhone. The iPhone, typically heralded as the smartphone that began the current mobile computing revolution, wasn't introduced until 2007. At the end of 2008, more than a year after its release, mobile traffic accounted for less than 1 percent of the global Internet traffic, which was not much of a revolution.

However, by the end of 2010, mobile traffic accounted for nearly 5 percent of all the Internet traffic, and at the end of 2012 it was nearly 13 percent. Halfway through 2013, mobile traffic has passed 15 percent of all the Internet traffic. This trend is roughly a multiplier of 1.5, year-over-year, and is likely to accelerate.

In the 4th quarter of 2012, iPad sales reached approximately 140,000,000 total units shipped, approximately 3 times the total number of iPhones shipped. The iPad was introduced 3 years after the iPhone, and just 3 years after the tablet revolution was launched by the iPad, total tablet shipments in the 4th quarter of 2012 surpassed both desktop and notebook shipments.

As developers, it is important we understand and embrace this mobile revolution or else we will be run over by it.

Throughout this book, we will be building a fully functional web app using ASP.NET MVC 4, HTML5, and CSS3 to support both desktop and mobile computing platforms. We will begin with building the desktop version of the web app but will be keeping mobile considerations in mind.

Once our desktop app is complete, we will modify it to support the mobile web using concepts such as responsive design and media queries. During this modification, we will examine the new features of ASP.NET MVC 4 we can use to better target mobile web devices.

In the last chapters of this book, we will modify the app to support a truly mobile experience using jQuery Mobile. It is my goal that, by the end of the last chapter in this book, you will have a complete understanding of what it takes to develop for the mobile web, and the tools to take your mobile web apps to the next level.

In this chapter, we will begin by examining a history of the mobile web. This understanding is essential in appreciating the unprecedented growth in the past few years. This chapter will also highlight some of the constraints that existed, and still exist, when trying to target the mobile devices of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We will end with a preview of the new platform support in Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 4.

Our journey into the mobile web begins now.