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Web Design Hampers Mobile Internet?
aws910 writes "Reuters is running an article on how flashy web design is impacting the usability of internet-enabled mobile devices, with quotes from Tim Berners-Lee. Although the article is sparse on details, it is an interesting topic for discussion. Having recently bought an internet-enabled cellphone, I can honestly say that most websites are painful to view on a 240x320 screen over a GPRS connection(EVDO is expensive/US-only). Have we moved away from 56K-modem-oriented design, only to be pulled back in that direction?"
Yes...but I don't think there's going to be a strong pull back....
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
IMO, broswing website using some silly little contraption is silly. Just view the sites on a regualr computer when it's more convenient. Or, every web designer should use CSS and have a handheld-friendly CSS option.
Is there that big of a market for mobile internet to have sites double design, one for PCs, one for 320x240 mobile internet devices? I know very few people that use things like that. Usually to check weather and the sports scores.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Flashy sites are OK. Not everyone uses a web enabled phone. But the site itself should provide less intensive stylesheets for alternate devices.
Have we moved away from 56K-modem-oriented design, only to be pulled back in that direction?"
I don't see this as really being a problem. People don't really browse the internet with handheld devices (phones, PDAs, etc) actually attempting to REPLACE their computer. People only want to be able to check their stocks or recent headlines. When the content you want to look at is just a dozen lines of text, a PDA is more than adequate. If you want to browse a page that is designed for 1600x1200 resolutions, chances are that the page ISN'T something you need to check right away, and can wait until you get to your computer.
Consider: the most popular and successful mobile technology is SMS. 160 characters of text.
Why? Because it is simple enough that people who cannot even use google.com can use it.
SMS can be seen as the "command line interface" for mobile applications but even this basic model is not well exploited.
Mobile web is a luxury that will work only for those who run full operating systems on small devices, and it will work via WiFi, not any of the mobile phone (2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, whatever) networks.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I just wrote a text only portal to the information I need using Nokia's Python SDK for Symbian 60.
:)
It screen scrapes the sites I'm interested in and just returns the stuff I *want* to know : local cinema showings, a few RSS feeds, my current bank balance - that sort of stuff
More work than most people will do but makes me happy
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Is strictly used for Googling 1) facts in dispute, and 2) addresses of places in New York City when I'm tired of winging it.
Those are about the only things it's useful for.
Maps? Ha! News? Not worth dealing with it. Stock quotes? Unless you are likely to make a trade, what's the need for quotes on the go?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Web designers should have been worrying about 56k speeds all along. Not everybody happens to have broadband yet, and even if they do, why should you bleed it all away with huge flash files, etc. If you have to add splash and flash, perhaps your message isn't as good as it could be.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I tried trolling my favorite messageboard (not slashdot) yesterday from the jon on my cellphone at work and I had a great deal of difficulty in posting an effective topic.
I think it is high time that America got it's priorities straight and focused more on bathroom/work/trolling technology.
mobile internet hampers web design. Its a two way street there. Its still annoying to put up with people who use 640x480 or 800x600 resolution on 19" monitors.
not the other way around. If enough consumers clamor for web-enabled mobile devices and sites that support them, then companies will create/modify their sites to accomodate the customers. This is Business 101 stuff.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Well, really, is anyone at all surprised that smaller screens and lower bandwidth is slower and chunkier?
I've tried using my cell to use the internet, and it took only a few moments to decide it was for emergency use only. Both because it's almost useless and that the providers want to gouge so much for it in the first place.
We've been moving in that direction ever since more and more idiots have decided I can't see any of their site without flash or some equally annoying browser technology. Gearing for slower links with older technology has been on the decline since someone pointed out it should be done.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I also just bought an internet-friendly cell phone (Treo 650), and I'm figuring out which sites want me to visit them while I'm on the run (Google and Southwest airlines, to name two off the top of my head) and those that don't (weather.com).
Either produce a mobile-friendly version of your site - which shouln't be the end of the world, considering that most major sites these days are run by content management systems, or let the viewers go to your competitors. Automatic browser detection would be nice, but I can handle typing "mobile" or whatever instead of "www".
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
So until businesses are punished for their lack of interoperability with mobile devices, this will always be the case.
And it's unlike they'll ever be punished because device manufacturers have the onus to interoperate with bad sites, not vice versa.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Let me save you the suspense.
It's painful.
The problem is technical, and solvable: my newsbot for example offers a personalized list of top news articles formatted for PDA/mobiles. I am sure there are other services that go beyond news...
has been negatively affecting the usability web-sites for years.
You might, but I sure won't. I don't want to try to compare various items I'm shopping for on such a tiny screen, etc. etc. I won't buy a device for browsing the web unless it can do at least VGA.
Why demand everyone in the internet re-write the content on all their sites because you are trying to use a bad device to view it? Should boat makers make all their boats tiny because you prefer bailing water with a thimble rather than a bucket? Use the right tool for the job, or don't complain when the wrong tool doesn't work as well as the right one.
Pulling down all of these websites on a Palm or PocketPC is very painful - my Treo 650 would take *forever* to load image-heavy Engadget, for instance. RSS is the perfect solution for the handheld. It allows you to quickly get a list of topics (text only, which is perfect for small screens) and then only load those pieces that interest you.
RSS is nice on the desktop. RSS is invaluable on the handheld.
Now if only a decent method of synchronizing multiple RSS clients could be developed (Bloglines doesn't cut it).
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
It seems plausible to think that the market forces will overpower (or otherwise direct) those of technology in this instance.
For example, do you think that Amazon will move to a simpler website design to accomodate relatively few mobile users? Or would they go to the trouble to create an alternate 'mobile-only' website?
The answer?
Yes, if the market demands for such a headache merit doing so.
Otherwise, I think the technology of mobile Internet will have to conform to the current market situation of flashy website designs.
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
I can't believe a dozen comments have been posted all to the effect of "don't look at the net w/ handheld - flashy is good",
... maybe ... but how about just dishing up information?
Well, flashy sucks on handhelds or on a real computer. I almost feel like I'm back on a modem when I visit some sites which feel the need to pull their flashy ads of some distant server and won't display squat till that happens. Or sites that are FLASH only - sure it's neat once
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
seriously, why should the rest of us suffer because this guy bought a new gadget?
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
I love my mobile internet. Yes the pages are moderately small and not flashy but at 2cents per kilobyte I don't want to be loading 50K banners and messy overhead. Maybe Mobile internet would catch on more if providers priced realistically.
Swiss Army knife.. I can see specialized sites, news, weather and, I suppose, sports scores, offering separate pages optimized for phones, but it's silly, IMO, to think that the majority of sites are going to do this. I'm certainly not planning on doing that with the sites I'm responsible for.
Once again it's the old concept that I want my cell phone to be.....(gasp) just a phone and a good one. I don't need it to be a digital camera, or a can opener.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Today, the low quality-but-cheaper-than-others Spanish ISP known by the stupid name of 'Jazztel' lost another potential customer thanks to its dreadful website: 100% flash! The only way to read its terms and conditions was to get the source of the little scrollable window, paste the text block in a blank document and print it... until I realized that I was the customer.
Their competition welcomed me with open arms.
If you stick to the standards you can easily make good looking sites that can scale any screen and browser.
Gimme some of that sweet, sweet crack.
Who would have thought that webpages designed for 800x640 screens would be hard to read on 240x320 screens?! That's simply shocking! I'm glad this story was posted because it certainly taught me something new!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Making overly-complicated pages did not start with the popularization of broadband. Think back to when frames were popular. I can't imagine how some of the framesets I saw eight years ago would render on a cellular phone screen. Many web designers are more artists than programmers, and this means that sacrifices of code readability and simplicity will always be made for the sake of the next big thing in style. Increased bandwidth only makes this problem worse by adding embedded objects and image-heavy sites.
If you're on a mobile device and browsing the web for information the sites with the most valuable info will likely be mostly text (aside from ads). If you're on a mobile device and browsing for media entertainment you'll probably want something specifically targeted to your device's size.
The moral of the story is sites which want to provide pure information should be mostly text and should not be too strict in their formatting (i.e. let the browser decide a lot for you and use relative sizes). Those that want to provide multimedia need to target devices because their media will have a different experience on each type of device.
Developers: We can use your help.
For example, PocketIE is shockingly terrible. It crashes on overly complex content and doesn't handle javascript. Netfront is better, standards-wise, but renders the text completely unreadable.
Palm's didn't, until recently, even come with a web-browser. I can't comment on how good it is because I've never tried it, but a friend of mine was reported as being "underwhelmed" by it.
In fact, the only decent browser I can think of is Opera for mobiles - and even that has only come out in the last couple of years and suffers from the odd navigational and rendering quirk.
So, yes, flash does cause major problems - but there are plenty of problems with sites that don't use flash that could be easily solved with a half-decent browser.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
People can say that "nobody uses a cell phone to browse a website", but the reality is that because most sites are designed without thinking of cell phones, people don't want to browse.
Nobody wanted to browse the web back when it first started because you didn't have anything to look at, or because the stuff that was there wasn't worth it.
If more people design with PDAs and cell phones in mind, more users of those devices will use them.
"Have we moved away from 56K-modem-oriented design, only to be pulled back in that direction?"
You are pulled only where you let yourself be pulled. Gadgets and technologies (good or bad) fail because consumer forces refute them. Therefore, people who must always have the latest gadget regardless of its applicability, perhaps even you, are the source of your consternation. Consumers are sheep because they behave like sheep, and thus are treated so.
Wouldnt the optimal solution be to use RSS technology to just get the content you are looking for instead of trying to view the whole web site? What is gained by viewing all the graphics on a mobile device?
Butthead Vendor
Why roll back existing web content when the mobile device market is making leaps and bounds.
Screen resolution is only going to get better.
Connection speed will only get better.
It's not an insurmountible problem. I have a Windows smartphone (yeah, yeah) with a beta of the Opera browser which supports their caching proxy - not only does this reduce my gprs bill by cutting graphics down, but it also removes elements I can't display and reformats the rest for my device. Works a treat. I'm investigating something home-grown for the proxy end of things, but all the solutions I can find are geared to low bandwidth PCs, not the more limited smartphone devices.
Oh great, just when I thought I could stop designing for 640x480. :)
Seriously though, complaining about web sites that are too wide for your 320x240 screen is a bit like complaining about parking spots that are too small for your Winnebago.
I've done plenty of browsing on my phone or PDA. I just take it as a given that most sites are going to look like complete crap and it has never crossed my mind to blame the web site. You just find a few usable sites that you might need when you're away from your computer, and stick to those.
However, it would be nice to serve up a seperate version of your site to those browsing on smalls screens (perhaps just swapping the CSS). I've never looked into it, but I assume you can probably figure it out by looking at the user agent or platform. Anyone have any experience with this they can share?
Yes, I'm whoring, but...
0 04 a/
How about having mobile communities do collective adaptation? Sure it might be painful at first when the community is small, but then things gain momentum and flourish.
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~delara/papers/wmcsa2
No, I am not one of the authors.
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*beware the cute-bunny virus
Call me old fashioned but...back in my day we accessed the internet by sitting at our PC's and opening Firefox.
Don't blame the fact that people aren't using their cell phones for Internet access on the web pages. Blame it on the design of the standards.
I'm a web designer who uses XHTML and CSS, but the truth is that if you are on a cell phone you will not want to download any of my pages. Currently the thinking is, "let's make our pages cell phone friendly", by separating presentation from content, but that's not enough. Cell phone users usually want to access some key feature of your website - not actually browse the web. Even with full XHTML and CSS separation, pages are still huge. What we need is a common, widely accepted standard of how to create a cell-friendly sub site without having to recode everything.
Even if the speed and availability problems were fixed (data via cell is still very slow in the US), think of how much it would mean to download IMDB's homepage to look up an actor. No matter how perfectly you fit today's standards, there's just no way to reasonably display that on a cell phone's screen.
The problem is easily solved with style sheets. I have a 3G Nokia, and find browsing the web when on public transport a very good use of my time - but I only frequent those pages (or aggregators) that take into account my viewing dimensions (despite OperaS60). Reading blogs, for example, should be completely painless, since it's mostly text content, but frequently it's a terribly pain. These devices clearly identify themselves via their browser, so websites should apply different style sheets when browser = OperaS60 or whatever. As for 56k modem design, my 3G connection frequently beats my old dial-up, so I don't think that bandwidth is the problem, rather resolution.
It's not about bandwidth, it's about usability.
...and that may be my one gripe with this article. It seems to be blaming web designers for the lack of functionality on mobile web access. While I think that may, in part, be true, that most mobile devices have low-resolution displays, very little processing power, and less-than-efficient interfaces, operating on overpriced, under-performing data networks is a much larger barrier for the use of mobile web access than just web design.
The permeation of flash-based advertising, unnecessarily-bloated UI design, and lack of consideration towards lower-resolution displays have put a damper on mobile web access.
I know it's at the point where I've recently canceled my unlimited data access on my Sony Ericsson S710a. Why? There just isn't anything to do with it.
Mobile web, right now, is basically about IM, sports scores, news, and very limited email and document handling, and that is the fault of the devices themselves, not web designers.
Forgive me for saying so, but in this day and age, if you dont have or use a broadband connection, just how many people are going to take you seriously on the Internet and want to market their services to you?
Please dont give me a million Grandma and Grampa stories about how they picked up some item on Ebay over their USRobotics piece of shit and were thrilled to do so, either. Broadband is super-cheap these days, and if you dont use it, why the hell should some one make their web site nice, sparce and ugly for you?
On the other hand, any web page larger than 60-80k is stupid on its face. No decent web designer would create pages larger than that, and if IE ever supports PNGs right, this argument is moot.
If you're using best practices -- stylesheets, semantic markup, alternative stylesheets where necessary, it shouldn't be a huge problem to have your site display well on a mobile device.
The one exception is that some of the more ambitious effects on sites like alistapart.org may be garbled on a reader that attempts to interpret css rules.
I'd also be concerned with the oncoming popularity of ajax effects on sites.
Makers of mobile browsers shouldn't be let off the hook either though -- each mobile browser should have an easily accessible stylesheet toggle so that the site information can be seen in lynxlike clarity if necessary.
It's no suprise to me (a web developer of 6 years) that the "internet" is going to begin splitting into subsets of standards. We already have several which make up the internet: HTTP, SMTP, FTP, etc. You simply cannot create a "standard" which meets the requirements for dramatically different applications. (That's why WAP was invented).
50 years ago it was inconceivable that the television would need to have multiple channels, let alone the hundreds that are available on basic cable today. After all, most cities only had one broadcasting station!
In the same way, the WWW will begin "splitting" as it were, in order to satisfy different needs with different solutions...
...and yes... my crystal ball is W3C compliant...
I owned a cell phone capable of web 7 years ago, I believe it was called a Duetto, or something like that. Of course there were very limited sites available, but at the time there was (don't know if it exists anymore) an effort to write for handheld devices with something called HDML. The phone's display was character based, and the surfing was painfully slow, painfully limited, and not worth any money paid for the service subscription.
It kind of became (and today becomes) the chicken and the egg.... which comes first? Enough users to make the extra design and coding worthwhile (especially retro-fitting existing web sites)?, or enough web sites small-device-ready to entice a reasonable demographic?
My personal feelings are web experience on tiny devices is abysmal.... can't imagine there's really any pent up demand nor any huge future demand for something like this. (I actually am a bit from the old school of really liking a phone to be a phone, a camera to be a camera, etc.)
<horse type="hobby">
The WWW is also useless on a real PC if you actually try to use the resolutions the PC is capable of. For instance my current PC/monitor combination can handle 2048x1536 resolution.
I tried that just the other day, and >90% of sites were just unusable, even if you increase the font size.
Then again, >90% is way better than the OS (MacOSX) and my actual applications which was 100% unusable...
Apple is just sitting on this revolutionary resolution independent windowing system, and they just won't let me use it as intended.
For gods sake, I just want 300 dpi monitor resolution, is that too much to as for? Especially from the company that popularized WYSIWYG?
</horse>I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
Flashy web design isn't the problem, mobile phones are just too small for accessing information designed to fit much larger screens. That's why WML and WAP came about, to find another way to present the same information to smaller devices.
Stop trying to cram more shit on a phone and just go buy an utlra-portable laptop if you really want to access the web all the time.
I've had a Treo 600 for a year and half, and have built a library of PDA friendly sites. Most of the big sites offer an alternative view through either a mobile. prefix on the domain or a /pda suffix to the main site.
Here are my most used sites from my phone:
http://www.mapquest.com/pda/maps.adp
http://wap.espn.com/
http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/
http://mobile.wunderground.com/
Reality check:
Not everybody on the Internet is male ages 18-30 anymore. A growing population of InterWeb users are in their 50's and 60's, and don't have the unabused eyes of the young.
They can barely read their own email in 800x600 mode on a 19" monitor. Trust me, I work with them, and they don their 1/2" thick glasses, crank down the resolution, bitch constantly that they need bigger monitors, and they still can't tell who their email is from.
And when some clever web designer replaces text with images, so that the font settings in the browser that crank every font up to 20pt don't work, they get cranky.
This is the Slashdot Syndrome in full effect.
For those who do not know, the Slash Snydrome is the mistaken impression that Slashdot posters have, en masse, that all of sociey is essentially just like them, only dumber.
I can afford a 19" monitor. They're only a hundred bucks. Everybody can. I can read sites fine in 1600x1200 mode. Everybody can. I don't illegally steal music. Nobody does. It's a myth perpetuated by greedy evil Republicans and their coprorate lackeys. I know how to program, therefor everybody should be legally required to learn C and one scripting langauge before they're allowed to so much as check their email. I breezed through school, therefor it's not hard (people who don't get it are just stupid). I don't need a gun, ergo, nobody else does. I don't need an SUV, ergo, nobody else does. I like Linux; ergo, everybody else should (if they weren't so dumb, they'd know this).
Only I see the world crumbling around us, and I fight and struggle valiently, romanticizing myself as the lone soldier fighting a hopeless war against an overwhelming oppressive evil empire of corporations and politicians. I talk about it on Slashdot so everybody knows. If only the rest of society wasn't so dumb....
The error here is assuming that "Design" means flashy.
A good designer will know that design is first a tool to aid the presentation of information.
Those interested in the current discussions going on in the web design sphere about accessible design should check this out: http://www.alistapart.com/topics/accessibility/
True "artistry" in design comes from, and coexists with function.
If we look for educational (informational) material, artsy-fartsy page design gets in the way. It increased the download time of the page. It never qualifies as "Art". If page layouts are not idiotic, they are tediously, pretensiously, BORING! Worst: Flash intros with no non-flash skip button. Sheesh!
If we look for entertainment material, REPEATING THE SAME FLASH INTRO AND MOVING MENUS every time we visit the site is NOT ENTERTAINMENT. Wacka-Chicka 70's porn music is not amusing 35 years later.
Hell, even when we look for porn, we want the porn. We did not go to a web page in search of stupid icons and animated (non-porn) gifs.
And speaking of porn (did I mention porn?), what is with all those shaved twats? It makes the model look 11 years old.
Yuck!
Not to mention the prolifiration of porn shots that have all the allure of a gyneological or animal husbandry textbook, but that's a rant for another time and place.
P.S.
For those who remember my objection to Jacksons whitherd tit at the superbowl now calling me a hypocrite about porn, I will spell out the difference for you:
I have no objection to people searching out, viewing, consuming, etc. porn, (animal, vegetable, or mineral) as long as it does not involve underage children.
I do object to porn being thrown in the faces of people who were not looking for and did not expect to see it. That's just plain rude.
Seriously, when will people stop finding sh*t to complain about? Do you really need to view the webernet on your cellphone ? gimme a break.
In reality this drives moble devices to have better screens and faster connections.
My treo650 (320x320) on sprint works out very well for what I need to do with it (network monitor pages, news, weather, wikis, following email links).
It would be silly to take current design backwards for the short term while PDAs and phones catch up.
daniel
The Japanese succeeded in doing this several years ago.
If you go to a website with a computer then it downloads the HTML, if you go the same address via a handset, then it downloads the cHTML site (although it automatically downloads the HTML if the cHTML version isn't there).
cHTML is compressed HTML, better on bandwidth, and the web designers also design it for multi-sized mobile phones and PDAs.
The Japanese have been doing this for years - simple solution, easy to implement, very usable.
This is why websites should use Java applets. It is more universal, it does not require downloading the flash player or shockwave. And more phones have built in support for Java.
I have always been anti-Flash and anti-PDF because they require jumping through hoops to get it to work. Not only do you have to instal it, often not even getting the exe file but rather having it instal over the net, but then when you go to some website like espn, they blow up the whole page filled with flash and all sorts of crap. Sometimes all I want is the news, not big ADVERTISING in flash that I can't control or get rid of. So what I do is, I just don't use those websites anymore. And I keep flash off my computer.
Java is the anwser. Applets can do everything Flash can do, and better. Plus, applets give the end user some control to disable them, to not play them.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I love the fact that the "mobile internet" (whose usefulness, necessity and popularity should be seriously questioned) is discussed with this air of 'manifest destiny'.
How dare these silly "flashy designs" hamper the true calling of postage-stamp-sized browsing!!!
If the tables were turned, I imagine design & branding advocates would charge the "mobile internet" with hampering the true calling of world-class design, branding and online entertainment.
As a designer I agree that standards are of course important. But standards which require conformity on cellphone screens? Hah! No really, you're kidding right?
Everything happening in design right now suggests even greater convergence with video, audio, applications, etc. (You know, all the stuff Mr. Berners-Lee dismisses as "flashy")
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I've been using a Loox 720 for a few months now, and the VGA resolution screen allows many sites to be viewed well in their full versions. Okay, so the full PDAs are on their way out to be replaced by smartphones, but there's only a minor difference between the two platforms - even more so when they may both run Windows Mobile.
Despite the increase in resoltion, though, pages do still need to be actively developed for mobile devices, whereas currently they seem to be byproducts of whatever news update script the site uses. Slashdot's own could do with some work.
The BBC News Low Graphics site is the best example of a site designed for mobile devices. No fancy tables, small images, unobtrusive text-only menu. It renders beautifully on my PDA.
The other problem in all of this is that there's just no good way of serving adverts to mobile devices. With such a limited amount of space, using up large chunks of it for anything other than content would just irritate the user, as would using up their metered bandwidth to download large ad graphics.
This comment was formatted for readability, but I forgot the line break tags
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sulli
RTFJ.
How does it work?
For scraping sites, does it rely on hard coding the location of the information? In other words, if the site is changed a little, does the information get scrambled?
...I can't stand flashy websites that require plugins and bandwidth eating graphics to function. I have always made the effort to code only standards compliant, low bandwidth eating fast loading sites.
The company I work for has a large field contingent with often low bandwidth connections back to corporate so such design behavior is a must. If it can't be done with XHTML1.0/1.1, CSS1/2, and a little javascript (note a LITTLE javascript) than the design needs to be rethought.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
If the regular internet paid more attention to bandwidth and standards, the mobile web would probably work just fine.
If a single page requires several hundred K and several plugins only available for a Commodore 64, you know who you are!
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
I have both a Dell Axim x50v (480x640 Windows Mobile 2k3) and my cell phone (LG 325, tiny little screen). Most sites are a major pain to access.
There are a few that are good. My site looks fine (but it is VERY simplistic so that's to be expected). Some sites work to make things look good (Google, OSNews). Slashdot is unreadable on the phone (except in Palm mode which is terrible) and can be read on the PDA in "1 Column Mode" (which works pretty well with most sites). By try to visit any commercial site and you are out of luck. Dell, Maxtor, and most others I've tried (often who like to use one large image split into little images so their site looks like an interactive print ad) are almost completely unviewable. You know why surfing on phones hasn't taken off? Because back when it would have been feasable (simpler pages, years ago) the phones weren't available. Now that they are, sites are unviewable (except for the terrible little portal the phone company provides and one or two other sites specifically designed for phones). Combine that with the increasing prevelance of sites like I explained above and even worse... flash sites... and you just can't do much of anything. I'd call it a chicken and egg problem, but there are millions of eggs out there (the phones), but almost no chickens (sites).
CSS should be able to solve this (if done correctly), but that's not easy, most phones don't support CSS (don't think so, anyway), and most sites don't seem to use CSS (or at least don't have the stylesheets for phones/PDAs, only for normal browsers).
OSNews is actually a model site in this respect, IMHO. Go to their site in IE/FF/Netscape/Opera it looks just fine. Go to it on my phone, it looks different (simpler) but just fine (all the content is there). Go to it on my PDA and I get the desktop version, which (in 1 column view) looks just fine. Haven't checked the site in Lynx, but I wouldn't be suprised if it worked just fine.
Sites need to do a better job. With all the content management systes everyone seems to use (I even wrote my own for my site), you'd think they could come up with a way to make near text only pages with no columns for people on phones/PDAs/screenreaders/etc. Which is another point. I would think that the same things that make sites easier for phones and PDAs would also make them easier to use for the blind using screen readers.
But most places can't be bothered. Dell SOLD ME A PDA, and their site is a pain to access ON THAT SAME PDA. Shows how much most companies care.
PS: And god help you if you had to surf in anything less than 800x600 on a desktop these days. Same problem. Maybe that's the solution. Give everyone's phones 1024x768 and a jewler's loupe to view sites with.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Well, in the states, we have very slow mobile internet. EDGE should help a bit. I do know verizon offers highspeed mobile internet but its way too damn expensive. For now mobiles will be limited because of their lackluster support of what many deem standard web practices. Flash and other multimedia won't be going away anytime soon. Mobiles even have a hard time with javascript at least the ones I've used. Ever try to pull up local.google.com
and get directions? Well it just doesn't work. Google forcibly tries to redirect to a WAP site because its better suited for less capable devices. For now that sadly includes mobile phones. Though I will jump for joy when we will be able to sustain broadband speeds from a phone. Then i'll be one of those people who uses their cell phone as a modem in remote locations. But even then it may be a futile attem considering the way Wi-Max may turn out.
Any site that puts out content that doesn't have special formatting and alternate content for handhelds also probably doesn't have it for the sight-impaired, or others with special accessibility requirements. It's not really that hard to do and no one has an excuse to not do it.
For almost two years I have been using a Kyocera 7135 Smartphone from Verizon (it runs PalmOS), and I use it to browse the web all the time...but it is rough. Not because of the phone per se; it is because of all the bloated websites. Here's when I usually use my smartphone:
- when I'm on the subway (DC Metro)
- when I'm waiting in an airport
- when I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get ready to go out
- when I'm waiting for Chinese take-out to be ready
- when I'm waiting for somebody to meet me in a restaurant
- when I'm bored in a meeting (sad but true)
In other words, there are LOTS of occasions when I find it useful to be able to browse the Web on my handheld. I primarily use two browsers: EudoraWeb (which just delivers text) and "Web" (came with the cellphone, and delivers text and graphics). Neither browser supports advanced features such as Java, for example.
Websites I often try to visit include Slashdot, Ars Technica, Groklaw, eBay, Amazon, Moviefone, Yahoo Maps or Mapquest, Travelocity, various white pages (i.e., for telephone number lookups), Wikipedia, Google, and various news and airline (flight status) sites. In some cases these sites also have custom clients, or thin/text-only versions of their content, and that does help. But in general, most of these sites are barely tolerable or entirely unworkable on my Smartphone.
For instance, I'll read Slashdot in EudoraWeb, and it takes a long time to scroll through all the header text to get to the stories.
I believe that in the future more people, like me, will want to browse the web via their handhelds -- for all kinds of purposes (like the ones I listed above) and in call kinds of situations (like the ones I listed above). I think the sooner Website authors learn to accomodate handheld clients, the better.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Today's website author is most likely a blogger of some sort. Even corporate content is moving in this direction. Now, granted, flashy content is still the norm for marketing, etc...but looking at my web stats - 100% of my users are using a screen larger than 640x480. Now, that doesn't necessarily count my RSS readers, which is available through a myriad of open source readers. One would think that if the PDA folks REALLY want to read my content, they'll use the RSS feed, funneled through a portal designed for their device, by say....Yahoo, or someone else. But the folks designing the marketing level content aren't going to care about this 1% of people browsing the web. If they're a mobile-geared application, they'll gear it down (if they're smart) to WAP or similar 'small' content presentation. As we move more toward gatewayed services, authors will depend more and more on Yahoo and Google to provide gateways into their content. RSS and other XML solutions will continue to service the needs of the mobile browser.... Who here doesn't still use the WAP gateway on Google?
Its not going to get any better, flashy gimmicky webdesign is in demand and web-standards are slipping out the window. The only solution I can see is to just increase the screen size and resolution of phones, the screens are a bit too small anyway.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Layout is a hassle, for sure. But even more painful is the cost -- Canadian carriers charge a fair bit for GPRS traffic and overage is charged at $0.01-$0.03/KB. Sites are getting fatter on images all the time -- and ads make it worse. Hit the wrong sites and you will end up with a very hefty bill.
Shut up and make sites Lynx-compatible and no one will have a problem.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I've had to go through a couple of shooting matches with regard to this environment. I had to develop a WAP interface for mobile phones and trying to get normal common ground on the size of the interface was like pulling teeth. The problem with most businesses is that they don't understand (and in a lot of cases) don't care to understand why it won't work but that it /should/ work and that is it.
I can sympathize with anyone trying to access the web OTA.
That seems to be one place where the U.S. is ahead of Europe. Probably stems from the "business-oriented" slant our cellphones have had for ages.
Verizon is $50/mo for unlimited data usage, and if you decline a data plan your data usage is deducted from your minutes. They're the priciest of the bunch.
Sprint Vision is $15/mo for unlimited PDA data usage I believe. I wouldn't be surprised if VZW drops their data prices soon because of Vision.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As an occasional web designer, I try to make everything PDA friendly but you know . . . it's nearly impossible to do that in text without seeming extremely pedantic on a page with images. And when I think of the size of your average PDA, I begin to wonder if it's really worth it. Most companies and users just want to have something on the web that confirms they exist and are every bit as good as other sites. They don't care about PDA compatibility, they care about having flashy graphics. Zeldman & co. talk about how everyone can have things their way on their browser, but I don't think it's always a good idea. What is a good idea is trying to figure out who will use your site, and under what conditions, before you try to accomodate everybody at once and drive yourself crazy in the process.
Monster Zero is the reason we cannot live on the surface, but must live forever live underground like this.
What is this notion of "supposed to be"?
And what is he talking about when he says "this is not a question of weak demand"?
It ABSOLUTELY a question of weak demand. The number of people with PDA's and phones on which internet browsing wouldn't suck is miniscule.
Tim's agenda is to bring the Internet into every corner of our lives, and he's blaming... who? Web designers? Heh...Pshh...
Newsflash for Tim:
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Yet another example of how these page layouts aren't "Web design", but "graphic design" for the Web. Or not really for "the Web", but rather for "IE 5.0 and more or less other apps that work kinda like it". Graphic designers are just starting to hit the hard limits of their "discipline" that industrial designers hit in the early 20th Century. When "designed" objects had to "work", and work with other designed objects not desigend as one combined object. We came up with "system design", which graphic designers haven't even considered since Churches in the Renaissance. Graphic design as a subset of graphic art, rather than encompassing art and related function, is an accident waiting to happen.
At a degree of complexity, esthetics and function part ways. When we're lucky, esthetics catches up eventually. With the Web, too much graphic design rushed ahead without regard to functional requirements. The Mobile Web is the first major change in the Web platform, and the graphic "design", or lack of it, is cracking under the strain.
--
make install -not war
I'm suuuure that most people want to view Tokyo Plastic on their blackberry or PDA. It's simply a needed thing.
Web Design For Mobile Hampsters? wtf...
oh, nvm...
1. Websites are bloated, even with large monitors. Web designers should take notes looking at Google's sites.
2. Browsers report themselves (albeit not cleanly) to servers, so it is not a hard thing for a content management system to deliver pages tailored to the device. Mine does.
I use an Ipaq 4150 to browse, and it is painful with many sites. If I'm on the go, I'd like to be able to do all my essential computing on it, but bloated websites keep that from happening.
My personal website is delivered by a CMS that will deliver a PDA-friendly format to PocketPC Internet Explorer. This is simple to do, and all CMS should be able to do it.
Oh, internet on cellphones? fuggedaboutit.....
Simply put, the content, meaning the stuff you are really there to get, is encoded as XML.
The fluff, or eye candy part, meaning the way the content appears to the viewer is controlled by the XSLT style sheet.
The same content is presented in one flashy format, for highbandwidth, big screen clients, and a different format for low bandwidth, small or tiny screen clients.
This solves the problem quite well, and is why HTML has reached the end of it's development cycle, as it does not support this functionality easily.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My Opera on P800 is functional, but not too great. It's slow, and it has difficulty with stuff like Mapquest when it autoscales graphics. Also, it really needs to be rotatable by at least 90 degrees.
I think what would be really sweet would be a Firefox port to Symbian, and a situation whereby a user's bookmarks, autofill and cached password information was sync'd between handheld and stationary browser installations.
In theory, Apple could knock this out of the park with a Safari port to symbian so you could have a portable music/video/phone/internet pdaphone that isyncs bookmarks, addresses, calendars, etc.
I suspect more developers would be coding their pages for wireless devices if it were a simple task. CSS makes it fairly straight-forward, but there are very few nice WAP browsers for the desktop. There's a project called Mobilizer but it's development activity is slow if anything. More work in this area will be necessary before any real progress will be seen.
RSS is nice on the desktop. RSS is invaluable on the handheld.
Y'know, this is really what phone users AND web developers ought to be worried about in this area. Many web site front pages are not just graphics-heavy, they're text-heavy. Like a newspaper, they put a little of everything new and interesting on the front page at once, hoping at least something will catch your eye and draw you inside. No handheld or phone, no matter how elegantly designed, is going to be able to display that much text at once in a way that humans can process it. Period.
RSS is a perfect solution. It gives you just the headlines and/or first few lines of the article, with no graphics and only the most important text. Then you can either scroll to the next one or ask for more information. There's a zillion RSS clients for desktops, but really it's the handhelds and phones that should be embracing it.
Does every news site out there use RSS? No, but I'm willing to bet it's a much higher number than the number of sites with small-screen versions. Besides, RSS is a one-way device--if you want to search for information, you need a web form, and that's a little more work to design. But for cryin' out loud, I'd rather wait for a phone-sized version of a search engine than try to use a desktop-sized one.
The stumbling block for me is the fact that up in Canada, via Rogers, I have to pay something like $25 a month for 3 megabytes of network traffic a month on my Treo 600. I have to count every bit that comes and goes on my phone for not getting charged extra fees, reminds me back of the early days of the internet. Does anyone know of a Canadian GRPS provider that has a flat fee for unlimited usage? I'd love to be able to have my email be pushed to my phone, or listen to Shoutcast servers
People like myself scour the web for "mobile optimized" sites, then make a site of links to them. http://palm.nccomp.com
therefore, the idea of being able to surf the web from your phone the same as from your desktop is a pipe dream, because sites need to be optimized to run on mobile devices, and served up based on screen-size detection--obviously, this is feasible only if your mobile audiences are a big part of your market, which precludes most sites from targeting mobile users..
while i admire TBL, he spends about as much time in the 'real world' as RMS does--while his idealism is admirable, it tends to be detached from the situation 'on the ground'
...is coming from, but there are still millions of us out here with zero broadband. Millions, all over the planet. The broadband industry is only interested in competing in markets where they can hit thousands of people in a relatively small area, if that area has hundreds or just dozens of potential customers, nope, they aren't interested at all, there's no good tech way to do it, there's no way to make any money with any of the tech out there now, so there it sits and will continue to sit. I see their point really. I don't like it but I see it. We can't ALL live within two miles of a big phone box. If you live 3 miles away, sorry charlie no dsl for YOU! And cable! HAHAHAHAH! People waited 20 years for cable and just went to hell with you guys and got satellite tv dishes. And no, some 20 dollar "wifi" and a pringles can ain't cutting it either unless you live in some flat desert with no trees or hills in the way, so that's out too, don't even wanna hear it, that's junk science.
And no, saying that millions and millions and millions more people need to just up and move into "your" megaplex urban area where you have six competing choices of broadband is not a rational option, so I don't want to hear that either, it's *absurd*, it's the same as the lame retarded doofuses who say we can ALL ride "mass transportation" to work,it just ain't gonna happen because it ain't practical. You can technically ride your moped from new jersey to california, that don't mean it's a practical good idea to do that all the time. Same with the wifi broadband schemes, cool for starbucks, don't try to foist it off as some automagical rural area broadband solution.
So, in that sense, yes, a LOT of web pages now suck pretty bad from being coded for broadband connections only and wicked almost new fast machines with the latest video cards, etc, etc, designed so that you have to be on that big fat closed monopoly bogus "operating to heist your wallet system".
S-O-O obviously on them little do dad gadgets it has to be even worse than that. I don't own one but I can guess what most pages must look like on them dinky screens and low powered devices. I can re-late. My biggest pet peeve you see all the time is even with images off to speed things up all you see on some "fancy" web page might besome blobs of color, no alt text links. I mean, how hard is that to do? Is that now too much to ask of some so called self appointed web "masters"? That and so called "style sheets". I call them cascading sheets with no style, looks like abstract art a lot of places, not a web page. Probably looks wonderful on that webmasters home box, too bad it sucks for 50% of the folks out there. Probably a good idea, too bad it appears it's too hard to pull off adequately, maybe time to rethink that concept?? Is there some alternative way to do what you are trying to do, some way that actually works? I don't know but surfing around just tons of pages look just horrid, severe overlapping text and floating crap interspersed with other floating crap. I've had to pull source a lot of times just to read some page. Oh ya, I really want to go back there, oh ya really makes me want to buy your crap too or paypal donate to your page. Uh huh.
Ya, the article makes a point that is valid. No one is suggesting to go back to the 90s with design, but is there some reason that the earlier designs of just being able to actually read the dang content and go to the next link easily can't be incorporated into modern design? If you are such a fantastic web "master", is it too much to ask for you to do that easy low res version, give folks a freeking choice? You claim it's very easy, it's the old way to do things, why you learned it in the womb it was that easy and you are such a leet master now, so it should only take you like 5 seconds tops with your leet coding skills to do that if, well, *if* you are really a web "master" that is.
Is it really too much to ask for your advertised and indexed on google open to the public web page to just be
Many contries, you would be in the minority. IN the US, most people use a cell phone as a phone. In Japan, people do everything fom the cell phone.
I'm sire as soon as it's popluarity increases amongest your target demo., you will start freating sites to support phones.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What was the John Cusack film that he made before Identity? I wanted to know. I was at the video store, pulled out my web-enabled phone, went to my phone webform http://af2k.com/mpt/imdb.asp, which borrows from imdb.com/Find and asked... the answer choked my phone.
I was in a Karaoke bar, gearing up to sing "Wildflower" by Skylark, so I surfed onto google to review the lyrics. Worked great.
Mini-browsers are like swiss army kives. If you have one, you will find legit uses for them... <BLINK>IF</BLINK> the pages are NOT choked with crap.
PS: No, I didn't REALLY try to use blink tags
Pocket IE is a joke. Minimo on WM is better already and it barely even runs.
It's a sad but real scenario when Microsoft is gaining ground in the mobile device industry.
For every karma whore there are four more people with mod points to kill.
Rss
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
friggin MS-flash zombies and even worse the friggin fixed width page idiotd.
hint:
make a version of your page for text only browsers with 40 character MAX page width (if you must use fixed) this does not mean no images, but for the images for cryng out loud use the alternate text
how these idionts manage to make $100k/year and turn out the useless crap web pages they do is beyond me
hint:
learn about friggin style sheets and you can make versions of your page that use the browser info to tailor automatically. don't forget to have a manual select for the version as well because some of use don't like you to know where we really are and what we're really using
screw the typos, you can figure it out
That is all we need, another mobile windows device built into a hamper. I though that the fridge with the built in browser was bad but now that hampers have them, I guess I can browse while ruling from my throne.
I don't see that as the main issue. Websites are far too flashy nowadays. I'm reading Jakob Nielsen's 'Designing Web Usability' pub by New Riders. It's a little older, but makes great points. People are putting looks ahead of usability. All of the people saying that they aren't going to desing their sites to be readable by cell phones are foolish IMHO. What about all the designers that don't want to design for Firefox because IE has 90% share? Why don't all of the firefox people just join the crowd. Websites for businesses are storefronts. Why would you opt to exclude a group of people that might what to buy something from you?
In an online telecom news site -- can't find the link that I've posted before because Slashdot limits my ability to read my past posts -- a Nokia official stated that they chose to not make any cellphone EVDO compatible because they saw no market for it since the "DO" stands for "data only" and the poor users would have to switch between web browsing and talking on the phone.
I've been waiting for two years for high speed cell phone web browsing, and I blame Nokia, not small screen size!
Have a look at www.pdaportal.com for a great list of mobile-friendly web sites.
You can even customize it.
Take that in your pipe and smoke it, you nasty web design artist snobs.
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
A phone already has a processor, a screen, and wireless communication. At this point most other functionalities are just software. This was explained in 1936 by von Neumann.
Opera scales both text & images (even Flash) through its unique Zoom function.
;)
It's also the best browser out there anyway. And if you're too cheap to pay a few $$ to use the web the way you want when you've coughed up $hundreds on a monitor, quit complaining.
Just view the sites on a regualr computer when it's more convenient.
Except that it's not. I travel a fair bit professionally, often internationally, and when I'm on the road I use my Palm Tungsten T3 to check email and check information on a few vital websites. (Weather, Airline status, maps and a few others are invaluable) It is HIGHLY inconvenient for me to use my laptop, much less my desktop, whenever I'm on the road or in meetings. If you sit at your desk all day (nothing wrong with that), then being able to use the web on your PDA/phone probably isn't useful. But for those of us who don't, being able to use the web to get driving directions when I'm in the middle of nowhere is invaluable.
Fortunately many websites have a PDA friendly version of their site. Accuweather, Amazon, American Airlines (and several other airlines), Mapquest, eBay, Hollywood.com, UPS, FedEx, Slashdot and my broker all have Palm friendly versions which are very light and work great. I connect my T3 through a Nokia 6310i using Cingular. Has worked great in the US, Mexico and parts of Southeast Asia. (expensive overseas though...) Data packages are still overpriced but competition is bringing the cost down.
Anyway the point is, just because it isn't useful to you personally doesn't mean it isn't useful period. For those of us who spend a lot of time on the road, the mobile internet can be a godsend.
When the masses for a particular market DEMAND wireless versions of useful websites in droves, then I think this is an issue.
Maybe it's my limited American view, but I don't see a helluva lot of people walking around with pricey Treos and WiFi PDAs that need or want to surf the friggin' Internet. Maybe it's different in more cell phone/gadget advanced countries.
Personally, I think it's the gadget crowd that wants it, and until that crowd constitutes a large enough market to garner the attention of those paying the web developer or interactive agency invoices, it ain't happening.
IronChefMorimoto
At least in the US, web-enabled phones and PDAs are just starting to be affordable for mass adoption (freebies or highly subsidized with calling plans). Give it a year, and every website that matters will have a mobile-specific version available.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
I spend *a lot* of time on the web on my Treo 600. The only way to make it useable is to turn off image loading. The text (which is usually what I want anyway) comes up quickly, and is quite readable even on a 160x160 screen.
While I don't like making my fridge having a tv in it, and my tv having a fridge in it, I do thing that 1 device to rule them all is good. I don't want to carry my ipod, pocketpc, cell, and other gadgets. Having a cell in the car with mapquest is a great cheap alternative to a $2000 GPS. I agree, it's all just software, and its and easy logical leap
Compatibility with browers has not been a problem for me because I keep away from flash and other bandwidth/resource hogs. I'm keenly aware that a lot of my audience (75,000 visits/month typical on one site) are still using dial-up. I keep my graphics to a reasonable size and, If need to have a large graphic of some sort, I thumbnail it with the size of the larger version indicated. I suspect that most of my pages would not be too bad on a screen size as described, but I've not tried it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
The problem is attitudes exactly like that. oh, nobody will really want to surf whatever kind of content, blah blah blah should be good enough for them."
A friend and I were on a scavenger hunt and trying to surf some pages for clues and it was inconvenient to say the least. Flash only or at entry point sites effectively say, "we have enough visitors, the rest of you go away."
I remember berating United Airlines on their horrible interface, a few years back, and the guy on the other end of the phone said, "well, we just had it redesigned, it should be better!" Better, what a subjective word that was. Flashier, slicker, but not very useable, much less so than the previous incarnation.
A well designed website shouldn't make assumptions that everyone is going to have DSL and a 1024x768 screen. Why? Because it limits access to those who don't and they are still a significant number. Moreso, because people with handhelds are a growing population. Design to exclude them and your business model is such that a growing demographic doesn't matter and you can afford to throw it away. In such ways do competitors gain a toe-hold before carving out a piece of your marketshare.
I still run 56K at home, even though I have a 1280/1024 monitor and I by default disable Flash, first because it's irritating, secondly because I don't believe I must see anything animated. I enable it by choice for things such as homestarrunner and sbemails, but that's about it. I don't have the patience to wait for 1 meg of crap of incidentals.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
At least someone sees our needs... no, their not -100K, but they do load decently enough to provide what we need: http://www.wacklepedia.com/babeoftheday/babe_of_th e_day.htm
Oh, and these work pretty good from a Treo 650 too:
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/babe.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/exhib.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/amat.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/celeb.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/slut.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/mon.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/tue.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/wed.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/thu.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/fri.jpg
http://www.hotlynx.net/zpix/sat.jpg
Doesn't everyone need Mobile Porn...
it is a drag that more website designers dont use css for mobile devices..
e sheets seems like a good resource, id say i would use it ...but none of my user base is mobile at all, maybe ill just do it for my blog :P
this http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=HandheldStyl
-=[the machine masters the grim and the dumb]=-
Some of us have been screaming about this for years now.. Just beacuse we have broadband doesnt mean we have to suck all the bandwidth with stupid garbage.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think this should become an issue ONLY after we have a full and quiesced set of web standards that are completely and accurately supported in all of the major browsers.
In other words, the day after the sun burns out.
Did anybody here who had a bad experience with the Internet on their phone try Skweezer? It's a free service that you browse to on your phone, and then browse other sites through it, sort of a web proxy. It removes the things your phone can't view and makes the page much smaller besides. I'm surprised there aren't more services like this one out there.
(insert sig here)
As someone who actually reads (and posts on) Slashdot from a mobile device, including right now, let me tell you this:
1: You need a device with a keyboard. The Treo and iPaq are OK, the Blackberry is better, and the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick) is perfect.
2: You need a big screen.
3: You need a good browser. This leaves the Treo with Blazer (kind of - it's not the fastest) and the Hiptop. The iPaq is OK if you load NetFront (Pocket IE sucks). The Blackberry just doesn't cut it.
So, we're left with the Sidekick / Hiptop. It's the only mobile device that I will carry. It's what I just wrote this post on.
Most pages work great. Some don't. But *every* page is unusable unless you have a large screen and a good browser.
Slashdot, by the way, works ideally on my Sidekick.
It's not about the shinola, it's about making the friggin thing useful to anyone who might happen by.
a good web site looks good with lynx on a 40 column ascii terminal, looks good on a wall sized 2400x1280 projection. looks good on a 320x200 shitty contrast cell phone or PDA display, and looks good on the 'average' desktop.
What's amazing is the number of asshole web dudz who don't even bother to respond when you send them a polite email such as:
Dear web master dude,
I wanted to purchase something from your company but your web site offers no option for my text only browser. Suggest you offer a version that dispenses with the flash and provides alternate text for images. you might also consider those with low speed connections or cell phone displays in planning your offerings.
Thanks,
your wanna be customer
they NEVER respond
i mean you'd think they'd have some interest in doing their fucking jobs.
I've been thinking about how to best design a web site to solve this problem. For dynamic web sites, alternate "views" of the site could be automatically selected for different web browsers -- as long as there is sufficient separation between the content and the presentation. Maybe CSS could help, too.
Mobile *Enjoyment*
For 100000 years mankind has lived without being plugged into a device all damn day. Go outside and play.
Vote Quimby!
It drives me right 'round the bend when our "technology savvy business leaders" who are said to walk on water because they produce TV commercials INSIST that every web site we produce, even internal ones, must be made as a giant flash object.
Apparently something that looks like a TV must act like a TV. Just another function of "if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" I guess, but it is infuriating.
Try to imagine 10 years from now: almost everyone will pull the Web out of their pocket, anytime, anywhere.
The challenge is how to get there. I work on mobile browser development, and we're working to make it possible to read all Web content on a smartphone. But mobile-friendly content is important. We realize that most sites will ignore that until a significant fraction of their users demand it, so we're trying to bring mobile users to the Web (even though many pages will still be a pain to view), instead of assuming the Web will come to mobile.
Also, not everyone lives in the US where most of one's time is either near broadband or in the car (where you probably shouldn't be surfing anyway! :)
Hootie must be pretty embarassed to be in that commercial...I wonder what the rest of the Blowfish think.
I've had mobile internet since about 1998 and it's getting more and more useful with each new generation of cellphones.
Now that i've got full colour and html rendering (instead of wml) it's getting pretty useful.
Being able to get maps and driving directions from your phone is a big plus. Having access to email and ebay can also be useful.
But i do feel the pain of rendering some graphic heavy sites over my 43k connection.
It would be a lot easier to bring the web to handheld devices if the makers of such devices supported standards consistently or completely. As the css-discuss page on handheld stylesheets confirms, support is often patchy or non-existent.
Every web user knows, along with Jakob Nielsen, that clean and simple web page design is best. However, every corporate web page designer knows that flashy and graphics-laden is the only way to go. Ever since the <img> tag was invented, these two worldviews have been for all intents and purposes irreconciliable. It'd be truly lovely if something could persuade the corporate designers of the www to KIS,S, but I'm not holding my breath...
People don't really browse the internet with handheld devices (phones, PDAs, etc) actually attempting to REPLACE their computer.
You have cause and effect reversed. Pages aren't designed for huge screens BECAUSE no one needs to look at them on small ones - no one looks at them on small screens BECAUSE it's such a horrible user experience.
If you want to browse a page that is designed for 1600x1200 resolutions, chances are that the page ISN'T something you need to check right away, and can wait until you get to your computer.
Wanna bet? Webmasters - including those for sites you may need to visit right now - have a tendency to blatantly ignore small-screen devices.
EVDO is expensive/US-only
EVDO is not us only. They have it in Guatemala for shure, and Canada I think.
Chances are any disscution on Slashdot will degrade into a flamewar about ID/Christianity within 14 posts.
It is possible to have your text separate from your layout, which is really how a page should be designed anyway. That way a simple javascript or php script can detect the device/browser being used to call the page and select the proper layout to encase the text in.
That way you do not need to have separate navigation trees and completely different text sources for visitors with special needs or mobile browsers.
This separation is not only good for accessibility, but it makes modifying your pages 10 times easier because you have everything centralized. You can easily add different levels of complexity to your layout.
There is no reason to have your text and your layout hard coded into the same page anymore.
-KS
Here you go.
"How many businesses really want their web sites to market to people still using 56K?"
All of them do. A customer is a customer. You want your website to work for everyone.
Even if you have broadband your connection may be slow that day. Do you want to loose a sale to someone just because their ISP is slow that day.
Now for Cell phone browsing that is different. It could really depend on your market. If you are looking to sell a $5000 CAD program who cares. Does anyone shop for stuff like that with their cell phone? For a restaurant, hotel, care rental, or movie theater it could be a big deal.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Without display problems. You know that you can dynamically scale the browsers fonts in OSX by presssing "command + =." This is true for Safari and Firefox, the only ones I personally use. So for the most part, your point about browsing at hi-rez is null, especially when it comes to viewing mostly text sites like Slashdot. In that case it's completely null. And even if the site specifies a set font size, I can stil increase or decrease their sizes.
Your limtations are clearly your "screen." If you were talking about using the "OS" at a higher then 100 PPI rez, then neither OSX or XP are ready at this time. But that's a different topic.
Go ahead and mod me down, sometimes the truth hurts.
I'm ditching my laptop in favor of a small device (PDA) that will do 90% of the stuff my laptop does for me. That's the reason I'd like to see more pages render in a resolution that small devices can see.
I've been working with more xhtml lately, and from what I understood, that was the point of using xhtml for sites. They would render the same on all sorts of devices (in fact, the book I have gives info on where to get emulators for WAP browsers, etc.) Is this not the case?
You would think that with browser checks and such, a site would know what type of browser it was being displayed in and load the appropriate page. Either using CSS or XHTML, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Especially because XHTML is designed for this purpose.
Granted, flash sites (well, most of them) won't display correctly, but personally I avoid those as much as possible. There's too much to them that I don't need. Plus, if I need to grab info from the page to read later, it's more difficult in a flash site than it is anywhere else.
I have become increasingly frustrated as well trying to view website with my Nokia 3650. This phone has a fairly large screen which I felt would give me an advantage with viewing websites compared to the small screens of my previous cellphones (Sony Ericsson, LG)
The sites that work good for me include:
CNN
ABC News
Yahoo
Yahoo Mail
Google
Google Images
Mobile Yellow Pages http://wap.openmotion.com/att/wmlattypc#text
TWC Weather
UPS Wireless
Fedex
Mapquest ($$ to use!)
This is not here.
I have become increasingly frustrated as well trying to view website with my Nokia 3650. This phone has a fairly large screen which I felt would give me an advantage with viewing websites compared to the small screens of my previous cellphones (Sony Ericsson, LG)
The sites that work good for me include:
CNN
ABC News
Yahoo
Yahoo Mail
Google
Google Images
Mobile Yellow Pages http://wap.openmotion.com/att/wmlattypc#text
TWC Weather
UPS Wireless
Fedex
Mapquest ($$ to use!)
This is not here.
IMHO it is not entirely the fault of so-called flashy designs. Some phone mobile devices do not correctly implement the CSS media attribute and use 'screen' presentation rather than the correct 'handheld'. That said I wonder how many designers design for handheld and how many companies give this a priority for their own websites.
I call bullshit. You're spouting idealistic, white paper bullshit that doesn't hold water in the real world.
1. CSS standards aren't there yet. Not even close to cross-browser, and buggy as hell in both.
2. Many (most?) web sites aren't just pages willed with information... they're applications. They're a hell of a lot more complicated than you make them out to be.
3. I checked out your link (slackersguild.com), and it's the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. Messy HTML, virtually no CSS, and I certainly don't see a mobile version of the site. If it's so damn easy to do, then why doesn't your own site do it?
I don't respond to AC's.
Rutgers University has a somewhat nifty website called www.whereismybus.com that is supposed to display the location of Rutgers buses in semi-realtime. This is needed because the Rutgers bus system is horribly fucked up and inconsistent, and it's nice to be able to know that the bus you're waiting for won't show up for 40 minutes when your destination is only 20 minutes away on foot (admittedly though not-so-nice parts of campus...)
Problem: The site is heavily dependent on JavaScript and ActiveX. Not only is it useless on mobile devices, it's useless on any non-Windows machine.
The end result: The people who need the information the most (students freezing their asses off at bus stops) have no way to access the information from their phones, no matter what capabilities the phones may have.
Typical Rutgers. Why the hell did I choose to go here for grad school?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I also saw something comparing sales of digital cameras to cell phones with cameras and I think it said the phones were outselling the cameras.
So what's the point? For one, many of us geeks are not representative of the rest of the users of technology. (For example, I don't even have a cell phone and rarely leave home without my Palm III.)
No, they were not made that way they BECAME that way due to the information overload and hyperstimulation of the internet and TV. I know, since it happened to me -- I'm 33 and unlike those 10 years younger than myself I spent the first 1/3 or so of my life without seeing or touching a computer (and obviously no internet either). Back then (and even after I met the VIC-20) I found that I was able to amuse myself in other ways such as reading or skateboarding or riding my bike or any number of other hands-on activities. I used to be able to focus on tedious tasks and repeat them until mastered but now I get bored and far too easily distracted.
These days I can't look at a web page or TV screen for more than a couple of minutes before I want to flick or click to something else. I can't remember the last time I read a book from cover-to-cover rather than just using it as a reference and looking in the index for what I needed. It's like a compulsion and it spills over into my working time... I alternate between coding and surfing since I can't really focus on one or the other for very long.
This is why if web designers have the extra time to make an imageless version of their page, they should. But otherwise I really think people should be sticking with the latest PC tech when thinking of their pages. It helps things advance.
most insightful post ever.
Installing Firefox = $0. Installing Adblock = $0. Installing Flashblock = $0. Experiencing the internet without ads: Priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everyone else, there's Internet Explorer.
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
Mod parent up.
Seriously. Why does a color screen become a feature? Yes, some people think that all they need is a color screen on their phone to be happy -- but there's nothing behind it.
I have to point people at things like Semacode, which is a really neat use for cameraphones -- it's a method of encoding a URL into a 2D barcode for printing. Shoot the barcode with your cameraphone, and the applet extracts it back into a URL for easy retrieval.
Also, you're right -- SMS is neat, but not neat enough to be a flagship product. We need data. I need to post my photos without paying my phone provider $.40 for each posting -- it's bullshit.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Well, now that Macromedia have decided to fuck their customers, that's one less thing to worry about. Now, we just need to get all the graphics formats to force you to install WildTangent before you can view anything, and the way will be paved for handheld-compliant websites
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
Flash is evil!!
This page says exactly what I've always thought about Flash.
In this respect, Flashblock for Mozilla is the best program ever - to get rid of annoying flash ads.
This topic was the inspiration for http://www.subuse.net (just convieved two days ago). Coincidence?
1600x1200 was unusable on my old 22" CRT, where as on a 20"+ LCD it's very useable. I'm currently on a 30", so even if I choose 1900x1200 it looks big.
e r-Tools/Scree nsaver-as-Desktop.shtml
Interesting video BTW. That's a great example of what GPU driven GUI like OSX is capable of doing, or Longhorn in the future. With OSX you can set any ScreenSaver as your desktop using an Apple Script and just like that video, it does not effect any of the GUI's performance.
Here's a link if you're interested;
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Develop
There was also a way to set a DVD as the desktop, but I forgot how to do it.
3D Games are hampering the laptop gaming market. Large hard drives are hampering the role of optical storage as a backup medium. Cheap laser printers are hampering sales of dot matrix.
/. on my mobile, but I couldn't login since the browser didn't have cookies. Also the side menu ended up at the top, so I'd have to scroll wayyyyyy down to get to the articles. Still, I don't blame /. for not creating a page that's that doesn't work well on a mobile phone.
/., DIE! (In english: The slashdot, the!)
Granted only the first example is really analogous, but come on.. any time you purchase a portable device, you're accepting some limitations on its abilities. It's not id's fault that you can't play Doom 3 on your cell phone. You can't blame one technology for the faults of another.
OTOH, I would like to see further advancements in screen quality and resolution on portable devices, so they can at least render a web page. I know that when I was in Japan, I could browse
Just kidding, I really do blame Slashdot. DIE
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
As a web designer, I would really like to see the development some universal (W3C) control standards. I'm not going to design simple pages for clients because simple pages look stupid, scare customers away, and give the impression that the client company accepts slipshot work. I just want a simple tag that I can use in the content and navigation portions of the page that will allow mobile devices to ignore the rest and includ a layout designed for lower bandwith and resolution.
So how about it, browser developers? Can you make that happen?
A hungry man will tell you anything if you give him a cookie.
Why do I need the layout if I have the data? There is nothing stopping the receiving device using its own software to display & manipulate data.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
To plead for the demise of shockwave/flash. and java/javascript in web content. text and pictures are ok. I can always tell my browser not to load images. If I want an animation, video, audio, or a game, I will damn well ask for it.
^..^
Still, it doesn't matter a bugger if the connection is fast if the device still has a small screen size and the browser doesn't support all of the requirements of the web site / content in question.
System Preferences ...then just zoom the images:
-> Universal Access
-> Zoom: ON
command option = zoom in
command option - zoom out
-- Terry
The Article title is incorrect.
The correct title should be:
"Internet-enabled mobile devices have poor resolution displays"
Anyone else remember when the highest resolution laptop computers available had 640x480 displays?
-- Terry
There is no great use or need for information in mobile format. Mobile manufacturers have created a market that bears no fruit. Sure there are a lot of us gadget junkies out here who wish we could do more with our mobile goods. But blaming web developers is foolish. If there was a dollar in it WAP sites would be everywhere, they take no skill and little time to produce. There is not money in it. And the demand for more WAP sites is based on the 'coolness' factor of mobile devices. Like the 'coolness' factor of Flash websites (which many of you are condemning). jlG.
Build designs that can degrade gracefully. Use unordered lists instead of page divisions (or tables :x).
Small screen specific CSS files would of course improve the user experience, but the main thing is that the user can access the information (s)he wants to.
The answer is standards compliant design. You can have the most outrageous and extravagant design you want for the web. Just include a different stylesheet for mobile devices that reorganises the layout and removes the high bandwidth pretty.
Everybody wins with standards based design.
If I have to navigate through Flash, JavaScript menus, or whatever, then I'm stuffed if I have a mobile phone. But I'm also going to have a bad time if I have a palmtop. Or a desktop machine running over a slow internet connection (POTS, mobile, broadband with very heavy traffic, &c). Or a small screen. Or if I have a big screen but a small browser window because I'm doing other things too. Or if I'm running over a terminal connection and using Lynx. (Or for some other reason.) Or if I'm blind and am using a screen reader. Or an partially sighted and am using other accessibility software. Or if I'm disabled and have trouble using a pointing device. Or if I'm running on a machine without Flash or the possibility of installing it (e.g. a locked-down corporate machine, or a minority platform). Or...
Any one of those might be highly unlikely, but take all those possibilities together, and I suspect you're talking about a significant number of users.
And of course, once you talk about restricting a site to a particular browser and/or OS, then you're cutting out still more.
The point is that the less you require of your browser, the more possibilities you're opening up: more platforms, more types of machine, more types of user and usage, more possibilities for presentation, more scope for automated reading or other apps, &c. And a simple site means faster rendering and navigation for everyone, mainstream or not.
Of course, this means that web designers have to give up something they cherish deeply: control. They like to govern exactly what you'll see (pixel-for-pixel if possible), exactly how you can interact with the site, the entire look and feel. And that's what works against versatility.
As with other digital battlegrounds (e.g. DRM), it boils down to who has control: can/should the site owner restrict your use of a site, or is the user free to use it in their own way. I think this is one of the fundamental issues of our time.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I do it for a living. XHTML and CSS. period. takes 2 minutes if you KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING and works everywhere, any browser, cell phone... whatever. Here's the problem. 1. Theres waaaay too many "web designers" with no (as they plead to get out of any responsiblity) "technical skills". These "web designers" without "technical skills" have absolutely no business whatsoever designing websites. 2. Many major websites are run by companies whos management cares more about branding and sales and image and all of the other crap that user dont give a shit about and theres no reasoning with them. They are old, they rarely use email and have no clue what html even is and they are the ones that hire these "web designers" in many cases. Fuck man, besides all that how many fuckin M$ Front Page jockeys are there out there that cant even get a site to run in Firefox! These fuckers drag and drop tables! Good luck getting the shit to run on your phone. ha ha ha ha
As an experiment, we implemented a picture gallery on the site that got the most requests. After 12 months, we are still getting requests from these same people for "more pictures", despite the fact that they didn't even realize the "Photo gallery" link has been prominent on the home page (every page, for that matter) for a year. They'd never even looked, and they certainly haven't posted any of the "hundreds" of pictures they wanted a place to display.
We've strived to keep the sites usable for modem users. And the modem users like that... but they're not the vocal ones at the "design meetings". The last design meeting wanted a streaming video added to the initial page. The video they wanted to use was just under 80MB... "It won't be a problem!" they said, "Nobody uses MODEMS anymore!"
"Show of hands, how many people at this meeting still use dial-up to reach internet?" All but three people raised their hands. "Do any of you nobodies want it to take 20-60 minutes to reach the web page, so that you can watch a 5 minute video?"
There isn't going to be a video intro...
No.
Well, I'm sorry, but websites are not designed and created to have an optimal view on a 240x320 resolution -- they are meant for 800x600 and 1024x768 -- today's standard computer resolutions. If your phone cannot display every aspect of the website then maybe you should try (depending on the site) a non flash version, or maybe just an alternative site (if you were viewing for something you could get elsewhere such as news or games).
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Ironically, the article in Reuters is shown in a fixed-width design, which forces me to either increase my window size or scroll horisontally. Thanks to Opera, though, it only takes one Alt+F11 press to fit the page to width. Opera, thank you very much! BTW, Opera is available on many mobile devices and in light of its recent partnership with Nokia it may expand even further. And Opera on mobile devices has such great technologies as "small-screen" and "medium-screen" rendering to adapt any page to a smaller screen.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.