Project Liike is an effort to produce guidance that helps organizations build mobile web experiences based off of existing web applications. There are countless devices available today and all indications suggest this number is only going to grow, without convergence. The factors to help choose between native apps and web apps are fairly well-known. Those who choose the web face numerous decisions and challenges based on their requirements. This project aims to help.

Who

The Microsoft patterns & practices team is a group of engineers (developers, testers, program managers), designers, and technical writers who produce guidance to help the larger community build solutions. We hope to make the mistakes so you don’t have to.

What

Generally speaking, the guidance is delivered in two related forms: code and prose. We have identified the project’s scenario and are currently building a sample application, called Mileage Stats Mobile. It will be released as open source along with all of its unit tests. At the moment we’re still jumping the legal hurdles to make the repository public, but it shouldn’t be too much longer. We’re also publishing the necessary documentation topics to describe our lessons learned, decision points and recommendations. This will all be completely free, no drama.

Principles

• This project values open, standards-based development
• We value the great work already available from others and intend to thank existing thought-leaders through attribution
• This work should happen in the open so everyone is able to follow along
• This project represents a conversation not a dictation
• We would like to meet the community where it is - using what it’s using
• The guidance should be based on the best thinking available but also the scenarios customers care about
• Will use the best open source libraries/frameworks available when appropriate

How

We hire experts, developers, testers, and writers to augment our team of full-time employees to build these deliverables. We do so using agile/scrum team practices that operate on weekly or fortnightly sprints. At the end of each iteration we hold calls with a group of advisors to demo the new stuff, discuss decision points, and get feedback on our direction. This feedback is crucial to our success.

Liike?

It’s a Finnish word that means motion/movement, which not only represents the mobility the devices provide, but how web usage is moving from desktops to devices.