SharePoint 2013 vs. 2010 – Part 6 – Mobile Support

​The experiences from SharePoint Server 2010 have been improved to make end users more productive on devices that have a smaller display. Additionally, some new features have been included. Here are some of the new and enhance features: New features Enhanced features

1. Optimized mobile browser experience: SharePoint 2013 offers improvements to the mobile browser experience. Depending on the mobile browser, end users have one of the following experiences:
   1. Classic view. This view renders in HTML format, or similar markup languages (CHTML, WML and so on), and provides backward compatibility for mobile browsers that cannot render in the new contemporary view.
   2. Contemporary view. This view offers an optimized mobile browser experience to end users. The view renders in HTML5. This view is available to Mobile Internet Explorer® version 9.0 or higher for Windows Phone 7.5, and for Safari version 4.0 or higher for iPhone 4.0.
2. Office Mobile Web Apps: In SharePoint 2013, Office Web Apps provides browser-based companions to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft OneNote. When Office Web Apps is installed on SharePoint Server 2010, Office Mobile Web Apps is also installed on the server. Office Mobile Web Apps enables users to open documents in the mobile web application by using a mobile browser.

With SharePoint 2013, Office Web Apps is no longer a companion product installed on a SharePoint Server. Instead, Office Web Apps Server is a new stand-alone server product that delivers Office Web Apps functionality on your private network. Although these are now separate products, Office Web Apps Server continues to enable Office Mobile Web Apps, making them available to mobile users who access SharePoint sites.

1. Mobile browser redirection: To access a site using the optimized mobile browser experience, a new feature called Automatic Mobile Browser Redirection must be activated on the site. When activated and a mobile browser is accessing the site, this feature checks the mobile browser to determine if it is capable of handling HTML5 or not. If the mobile browser supports HTML5, the contemporary view is rendered; otherwise, the classic view is rendered.
2. Push notifications: SharePoint 2013 supports applications on mobile devices (such as smartphones, tablets, and so on) that should receive notifications from a SharePoint site. Notifications can include events that happen in the site, such as when a user adds an item to a list or updates an item. For mobile devices to receive such notifications, device applications must register with a SharePoint site. Once the device is registered, you can write event handler code to interact with Microsoft Push Notification Service or notification services of other mobile device platforms. Notifications are sent from the server where the application is hosted to the registered mobile device application.