Anytime someone talks about the “mobile web” or browsing a web site on their cell phone I think of that Dilbert cartoon where he embeds a small computer into his ring. It only displays one character at a time. “Quiet, I’m browser the internet” , he says as he holds the ring up to his finger.
If I ever designed an alternate version of my website for WAP, I’d make sure that the font scaled up to one character per page. Just because of that cartoon.
Designing a great and easy to use webpage is more than just coding to web standards. It’s also a form of art. Developers who cannot excel at both do not deserve the title.
LOL…so there are, like, what, 500 developers in the world? At least there’s no shortage of chopped liver.
Jeff I totally agree - I tried to make the same argument in my blog:
a href="http://spaces.msn.com/smuga/blog/cns!F45992FB42C35BE4!518.entry"http://spaces.msn.com/smuga/blog/cns!F45992FB42C35BE4!518.entry/a
Even if a site can be implemented in such a way that it renders both on the PC and on mobile, it just means that it’ll be viewable on the two platforms, not necessarily usable (designing a usable mobile site takes some thought)
110% agree with this. Over here in my team we get lots of Pony thinking/wishes that you woudl’nt even believe. Your post reminded me that Pony thinking transcends all different types of scenarios, ranging from platform to something simple as webpage design.
110% agree with this. Over here on my team we get lots of Pony thinking/wishes that you wouldn’t even believe. Your post reminded me that Pony thinking strikes terror in everyone, ranging from platforms to webpage design/layout.
I must grant Scoble one thing: his aim (ever since the days of VBPJ CompuServe) was to become an apologist - sorry, evangelist - for Microsoft, preferably without knowing a thing about computers.
In that it appears he has succeeded.
OMG THAT PONY IS SO SO CUTE WAT IS ITS NAME??
i love oer hores
this is the most hilarious piece of writing i have ever read in my life! Gosh where do you get this stuff?
hi nice pony
i love the pic
Some of this will come with time as the toolkits start to magically take care of this - ASP.NET controls which render minimally on mobile devices, etc. For the most part, though, it comes down to cost. Web development is expensive, and I don’t think the cost of supporting mobile devices is justified for most sites at this point. Mail sites, eBay, and a few other major services with high traffic and a compelling mobile use case can justify the cost, but for most sites it would be a poor allocation of resources compared to adding features for the huge majority of their audience.
I’d be happy if sites worked well from 800x600 to 1920x1200. That’s not nearly as hard - heck, they could at least center a fixed width div if they can’t handle the horizontal scaling.
Hmmm, lets fit every website on my phone. Its ridiculous.
I agree, that most website are poorly designed and use tons a features that probably are not supported by the phones “browser”.
But if your use just HTML, you should be able to stream text to any device, including a phone. But people like to include client script, ajax, flash, etc. to make a “better browsing experience” and that stuff is probably not supported.
So, give users links to text only pages and they should be able to get the information they need. I would never view this site through my phone. However, I might want the latest NFL scores through my phone, give me a link to the HTML page/feed and that will work.