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Microsoft's Smartphone 2003 SDK Released
cd_Csc writes "Microsoft's long awaited Smartphone 2003 SDK was released today. This free download is critical milestone for the Smartphone platform. For the first time, developers are now able to use the .NET Compact Framework to write Smartphone applications using Visual Studio. At Smartphone Thoughts, we have listed the details of what's new in the 2003 SDK along with some screen shots of enhancements to the Inbox and Internet Explorer applications."
The XHTML support in these phones is great! As a bit of an XHTML/CSS advocate myself, however, I think browsing the Web from such space-limited devices could become a chicken and egg situation.
A LOT of pages out there are poorly coded FrontPage (or even MS Publisher) not-even-HTML 3.2-compliant junk. There are a lot of amazingly beautiful XHTML/CSS coded pages out there, and they all display well on the small screens.
How many people will buy these phones, surf to their favorite page, and then discover they can't get anywhere fast? Will devices like smartphones and portable computers, with and 3G's ability to access the Internet at speed, force more Web designers to follow the chosen path and design in a fully backwards, and forwards, compatable way with XHTML and CSS? Or will we have a chicken and egg situation where people are turned off from using the devices because the content and pages available to them are so poor.. just like with WAP.