I have a dream for the mobile web
Tuesday, 18. March 2008, 08:17:27
I have a dream, that one day our children and grandchildren will not be served pages based on the type of their device, but by the capabilities it supports. I have a dream I say!
A dream in which everyone will develop sites in the spirit of openness, and will be openly accessible to all kinds of people on all kinds of devices.
I am still dreaming
Developing for the mobile web is, and in the future will be, even more important for any serious web developer or web site.
If you haven't already chris' article or brian suda's article, you should probably do so now.
If you have read these articles, or Cameron moll's thoughts on designing for the mobile web, you probably have guessed the few different approaches to the same...
None of these things will be the right one to follow 100% of the time. There will be some sites in which the best thing to do will be indeed nothing.
For example, if you have made a site with web standards in mind, and its not really a very complex site, but rather a medium or small scale one or even a personal site, there is really no need to create a separate mobile freindly version of it. As long as you make sure all relevent non-text content has an equivalent text-based description with it, you're good to go.
Making a separate site will make sense when you know that providing the default-computer based version of the site WILL be annoying to the mobile user. In that case, it would be actually better to build a mobile optimized site. This is especially true in case of complex AJAX heavy sites, as all the JS, most commonly AJAX pizzazz you'll add to the site will murder your phone's battery life. In that case, it might be beneficial to provide mobile users a separate site altogether. However, if you look at the best mobile sites out there, they do have two things they keep in mind...
Firstly, even with the mobile version of the site, they try to keep the look and feel of the site in close resemblance to the original site. Plus all content available in the normal site is also available in the mobile site. Case in point, go to facebook's mobile site.
Secondly, they always give mobile users an option to go to the original version of the site. Many people using Opera Mobile and Safari for the iPhone are quite capable of handling _almost_ everything the 'full web' gives them.
User agent detection is something I abhore. As a web evangelist for Opera, I have get to visit many websites on a daily basis which do not work in opera. And when I look into their JS code, I find out that they are using browser detection, and then only detecting IE and NS(or FF), or they are detecting Opera and then not giving it the proper page, probably because they are too lazy to actually make their code cross browser compatible.
If people start doing user agent detection for mobile devices, then the day is not far away when developers will only design for specific mobile phones which are high in circulation or demand, and will leave out other mobile phones in the dark. Thats why, especially for the mobile web, IMHO, user agent detection is evil.
The media atrribute sucks for the mobile web. I dont like it. Even Opera Mini 4 doesn't like it and has got rid of implementing the handheld stylesheet by default.
I really hope modern mobile browsers develop greater support for CSS3 media queries. This way you can develop a site and have it optimized depending on the device width and hieght and not worry about anything else. As others around the web have mentioned, its kinda like object detection instead of browser detection.
If nothing else, then at least follow the practice of providing a textual equivalent for any non-textual content that you may have on your site.
In my next few posts, I'll be writing stuff on accessibility in PDFs, section 508 and all, CSS3 and more
Till then
A dream in which everyone will develop sites in the spirit of openness, and will be openly accessible to all kinds of people on all kinds of devices.
I am still dreaming
Developing for the mobile web is, and in the future will be, even more important for any serious web developer or web site.
If you haven't already chris' article or brian suda's article, you should probably do so now.
If you have read these articles, or Cameron moll's thoughts on designing for the mobile web, you probably have guessed the few different approaches to the same...
- Do nothing
- Make a seperate site
- Do user agent detection
- Use Media queries
None of these things will be the right one to follow 100% of the time. There will be some sites in which the best thing to do will be indeed nothing.
For example, if you have made a site with web standards in mind, and its not really a very complex site, but rather a medium or small scale one or even a personal site, there is really no need to create a separate mobile freindly version of it. As long as you make sure all relevent non-text content has an equivalent text-based description with it, you're good to go.
Making a separate site will make sense when you know that providing the default-computer based version of the site WILL be annoying to the mobile user. In that case, it would be actually better to build a mobile optimized site. This is especially true in case of complex AJAX heavy sites, as all the JS, most commonly AJAX pizzazz you'll add to the site will murder your phone's battery life. In that case, it might be beneficial to provide mobile users a separate site altogether. However, if you look at the best mobile sites out there, they do have two things they keep in mind...
Firstly, even with the mobile version of the site, they try to keep the look and feel of the site in close resemblance to the original site. Plus all content available in the normal site is also available in the mobile site. Case in point, go to facebook's mobile site.
Secondly, they always give mobile users an option to go to the original version of the site. Many people using Opera Mobile and Safari for the iPhone are quite capable of handling _almost_ everything the 'full web' gives them.
User agent detection is something I abhore. As a web evangelist for Opera, I have get to visit many websites on a daily basis which do not work in opera. And when I look into their JS code, I find out that they are using browser detection, and then only detecting IE and NS(or FF), or they are detecting Opera and then not giving it the proper page, probably because they are too lazy to actually make their code cross browser compatible.
If people start doing user agent detection for mobile devices, then the day is not far away when developers will only design for specific mobile phones which are high in circulation or demand, and will leave out other mobile phones in the dark. Thats why, especially for the mobile web, IMHO, user agent detection is evil.
The media atrribute sucks for the mobile web. I dont like it. Even Opera Mini 4 doesn't like it and has got rid of implementing the handheld stylesheet by default.
I really hope modern mobile browsers develop greater support for CSS3 media queries. This way you can develop a site and have it optimized depending on the device width and hieght and not worry about anything else. As others around the web have mentioned, its kinda like object detection instead of browser detection.
If nothing else, then at least follow the practice of providing a textual equivalent for any non-textual content that you may have on your site.
In my next few posts, I'll be writing stuff on accessibility in PDFs, section 508 and all, CSS3 and more
Till then
