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New Tools Help Create Cellphone-Friendly Web Sites

Posted by Zonk on from the mobile-interweb-needs-food-badly dept.

David Kesmodel from WSJ writes "New low-cost tools are making it easier for companies to register and build Web sites designed for cellphones, the Wall Street Journal reports. Domain-name registrars such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions are starting to roll out all-inclusive packages to target the mobile Web. And mobile-content specialists such as the U.K.'s Bango Ltd. offer their own mobile kits that help companies set up a basic mobile Web presence. Even so, the wireless Internet is still a long way from attracting a critical mass of users."

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. A novel alternative by symes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I'm out and about and need to look something up on the web I no longer try and use my mobo... call me lazy if you want, but I ring someone up who is most likely sat in front of a machine and kindly as them to do it for me. I don't know if it's me, my eyesight or what (ok, enough of the porn gags) but I just find it really hard to anything useful on such a small screen. Particularly as I usually carry a tablet and can usually find a wireless network. Surfing the net on my phone is a neat idea, I just can't see anyone using it a great deal. Am I alone here?

    1. Re:A novel alternative by dubiousmike · · Score: 3, Funny

      I am suspicious of your comment as Slashdotters don't have dinner dates. Unless, of course, you meant your mother.

  2. man html2moto by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Can you parse me, now?"

  3. Re:They need special tools by nthomas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They need special tools to make simple text websites?

    I have found that you don't need to have specialized tools or make special websites for mobile devices as long as you follow the standards and generally accepted web design principles.

    Case in point: I was able to surf on Google on my BlackBerry just fine, even before they added a special mobile section. Google more or less used sane HTML+CSS and I really didn't have any major issues with them.

    Other sites however, were doing funky things with JavaScript and Flash and other non-standard or ill-conceived technologies (e.g. by making their site completely useless unless you were running MSIE 6.x at exactly 1024x768 with ActiveX enabled) so I was never able to visit them at all.

    No special tool can compensate for lack of common sense

    Thomas