Will You Change Your Web Site For the iPhone?

An anonymous reader calls to our attention a blog post about the way the iPhone's multi-touch UI will strain the interface conventions of Web 2.0. This looming clash comes clearer as Apple releases more details of the iPhone's UI. Much has been made about the iPhone including Safari to provide a full web browsing experience. But this reader is wondering how compatible certain sites will be with the iPhone's input. From the post: "[Web 2.0-style interaction] makes somewhat heavy use of 'onmouse' events and cursor changes... along with CSS a:hover styles. The iPhone challenges those particular Web 2.0 conventions, though, because it is a device that not only adds support for another pointer, but at the same time eliminates them as interface objects... [T]he user doesn't get to express their attention with the iPhone... They only get to express their immediate action." This reader asks, "What other pitfalls lurk in the multi-touch web? Do any Slashdot readers plan to adjust their sites to ensure they work with the iPhone, and can you think of any similar issues that will crop up with such a different browsing experience?"

Comments

Conjecture about the iPhone?

[crimguy]

Sure sounded that way. Lets just release the damn thing and see what it does.

Re:Conjecture about the iPhone?

[TheRaven64]

It's not really specific to the iPhone. Hover and mouse-over events don't work with any kind of touch-screen, even if they are not multi-touch. If your UI depends on them, then you are an idiot and should never be allowed near a web site. Fortunately, most of the web sites I visit know this. The last site I remember that used most-over events for important data was Jabber.org, which used to put data about public servers in a tool-tip. This was horrendously bad, since it meant that important information was unavailable to a large number of browsers (including Opera, which always put the address in the tool-tip), irrespective of whether they used a touch screen or not.

In summary: Some web sites are badly designed, and if we try really hard we can tangentially relate this to the iPhone.

Re:Conjecture about the iPhone?

[Kyojin]

Why should something change when you hover over it if your whopping great big finger is in the way?

Re:Conjecture about the iPhone?

[Achoi77]

I wouldn't say that some websites are necessarily badly designed, it's just that there was a specific target demographic that web developers have aimed for when they were designing their websites. It just happens this largely includes websites that were mostly designed to be surfed with a keyboard and mouse, rather than some alternate input device, like a touchscreen

As we see more fancy pants ajax techniques that are driven based on keyboard input, such as that neato google suggest thing that they put out a few years back - while that would be incredibly convenient to a user with a keyboard, it wouldn't necessarily have any impact on user performance when they are using a mobile phone, especially one without some kind if keyboard input. Things like that would be.. obsolete? (hah, for whatever reason obsolete doesn't sound too correct)

IMO a complaint like the author's sure sounds like he's grasping at straws. Sure he could develop a one-size-fits-all site that will be (ideally)wonderful for using with kb/m along with a touchscreen, but all interface designers are keenly aware of the fact that optimizing for one type if interface will ultimately be sacrificing the other. A simple alternative would be to give a url that will redirect the user to an iphone(or similar device) optimized site when the user heads towards there, and another for the standard computer user. Why wouldn't companies that are trying to appeal to both demographics want to do this in the first place? Doesn't make too much sense to me - plus it would prolly be cheaper in the long run instead of trying to retrofit their site to be 'iphone friendly.'

Re:Conjecture about the iPhone?

[daeg]

He didn't say take the hover out of websites. Just make it non-essential. For instance, if you have a menu, have them respond to both hover AND click.

And "Ctrl+Touch = hoever" won't work at all. For instance, the touchscreens in my clinics don't have keyboards at all. Requiring multi-touch devices or devices that react on pressure won't work, either, as they are restrictively expensive for many purposes.

And it's not just iPhone users. No touchscreen mobile device supports hovering to my knowledge, including PDAs, smart phones, iPhone, etc. Not to mention that not all users are able to easily hover (keyboard, screen readers, search engines, people with movement disorders/shaking...).

All it requires is a few minutes of planning to ensure all hover operations have an alternative method to them and everyone can be happy.

Re:Conjecture about the iPhone?

[WNight]

How about we design interfaces with exposed controls instead of having everything pop up when we mouse near it? Instead of having to sweep the mouse over everything to see what it did, it would instead just be obvious from looking at it.

Things that need to pop-up information can have hover-text and when clicked, pop up a javascript floater just like the hover-text.

Really the problem is that almost everyone making a Web2.0 interface is an idiot, and ugly. What user ever asked to have to mouse over a heading, often all of them, to find a sub-option? What user wants non-native UI popping up when merely moved past? If you think this stuff is in demand, you must use MySpace.

Re:Conjecture about the iPhone?

[jacksonj04]

For crying out loud, it's just another device! Having a mobile device which can access the internet is nothing stunning, my PDA and phone have been doing it for years. The iPhone doesn't need a different site design to the other SEVERAL MILLION existing devices, so why should another few make any difference to how people design their site?

I write to standards

[rossz]

My stuff is writen to XHTML 1.0 Strict standards. If it doesn't work on the iPhone, it's not my problem.

That's the whole damn point of standards. Write to them you don't have to worry if something will work. Use quirks and tricks, and you're going to be dealing with a tone of headaches every time something new comes out.

BTW, "Hey, Microsoft! Fuck you and your shitty standards-ignoring browser!"

Re:I write to standards

[General Wesc]

If I use the web without a mouse, I can't initiate a mouseover event (assuming I'm not controlling a mouse cursor with the keyboard or something.) What standard am I violating?

There are two golden rules in web design: code to the standards and degrade gracefully. Both are important.

Re:I write to standards

[Heembo]

XHTML 1.0 "Strict Standard" has nothing to do with the clusterfuck that Javascript has become. Ever try to code a complex ajax task to support a wide array of current browsers? This mess has nothing to do with XHTML.

Re:I write to standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a dingbat. A web page with a bad UI can still be coded using all the standards. It's about making your website usable. For instance, *requiring* a user to hover over something in order to reveal important information is a very bad idea, even if you use completely valid XHTML. It will work in all the browsers but doesn't take into account the user, the user agent or the user's circumstances.

do *any* websites work on cell phones?

[mrcdeckard]

viewing websites on my current cell phone is a very lynx-esque experience -- arrowing between various links on the page, the pressing enter.

i have downloaded "mobile" versions of gmail and google maps for my cell phone.

i just don't see that this is a big deal. besides, to me, the most attractive thing about the iphone is that it will perfectly sync with my mac -- address book, calendar, itunes, iphoto, etc.

mr c

Touch Screens

[digitalchinky]

This is an entire non-event that is barely slashdot worthy at best. This issue is the exact same one faced by every other touch screen in existence. It is not a pitfall in any way at all. Simply a circumstance of the technology. I've seen some excellent touch screen interfaces that do provide a good level of feedback anyway - flashy colours when you punch a button, dragging fingers across the screen to move windows...

Do we really need to make stories from nothing?

Not for iPhone specifcally

[imemyself]

Not specifically for the iPhone. Maybe a simple low graphics version for PDA's and phones in general, but I'm not going to do anything special for the iPhone. If the mobile version of pages is simple/lite and standards compliant, then it should work with pretty much all mobile devices. If it doesn't, then it's probably the device maker's fault for using a shitty browser/rendering engine.

Realistically, the normal non-mobile versions of websites are not going to work well on mobile devices, period, because of the small size of their screens and limit forms of input. And the iPhones certainly not going to change that, especially given its lack of true 3G which will make the full versions of most sites horribly slow as well.

Mobile browsing is nothing new - Most major sites that people would frequently access from a mobile device (ie webmail, news/homepages, search engines, etc) already have mobile versions of their sites that work reasonably well. With its pretty high price tag, lack of 3G, and very few third party apps (compared with BB, Windows Mobile, and Palm), I highly doubt that it will spark a "revolution" in web browsing. It may look very slick, but technologically speaking it probably won't be earth-shattering.

Never has been input-device-specific

[Killer Eye]

The web, and for that matter an application, is not designed to be input-device-specific. If a site actually cares that I'm using a mouse, then it already has some pretty fundamental problems that the iPhone did not introduce, that you would in fact see on any phone. (Not long ago, I could browse any site I wanted to from a terminal with Lynx. In fact, I still use this as a basic compatibility metric.)

Applications should respond to requests for action. How that action is performed, on some level, should be of no interest to the application code. This is one of many reasons why abstracts in code are important.

maybe if your site sucks...

[larry bagina]

onmouse and :hover can be nice eye candy, but if a website doesn't work without them (and doesn't degrade nicely), maybe it's broken.

Re:Won't be a big deal

[MikeBabcock]

Actually the poster is correct -- there are issues, and it has nothing to do with Safari, it has to do with the UI assumptions made by Javascript programmers.

For example, if you have a FORM that submits when the mouse "leaves" the drop down box, please explain how that event will be triggered since there /is no cursor/. Sure, Safari can fake it for the sake of making automatic form submission work, but its still an issue.

This has nothing to do with rendering, it has to do with interaction.

iDon'tCare

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with the Mac'o'crap'o'matic everything these days? Mac is such a free software/open source pandering rip off. I am sick of their occult idiots who worship a hypocritical #(*$& that likes to get on stage with Gates. I'm about to puke. Gotta go. Who gives a SHIT!

content

[pytheron]

every time I read stuff like this, I think about what makes me visit webpages. Content. You can have it in bold clashing flashing colors if it pleases you, but if I _want_ to read it, I'll put up with it, or at least bypass your presentation. If my device won't co-operate, I still want your information, so I'll use another device.
This image of webmasters throwing their hands up in the air and running around "We've lost another random passer-by.. noooo!" makes me chuckle. It all comes back to content. If your site has something worthwhile, people will make the effort.

Re:content

[The One and Only]

If, however, you "require" IE and try to use tricks (rather than checking the browser string) in order to ensure I'm using it, I'm going to say, "fuck your content". Content is important, but good content will not inspire people to leap over literally every barrier in their way.

Smartphones aren't exactly new

[freeweed]

You know, people have been browsing the web on Blackberries and Treos for quite a while now, right? While many sites decided to go the "mobile." route, a good chunk of the web works just fine on a smartphone. Has for a long time.

Mostly it's things like tables and oddball CSS that bugger up smartphones. I can't say that I've ever experienced an "OMG NO MOUSEOVER" moment with my Crackberry.

Shit, Google even has several of its apps specifically released for smartphones, because they realize the AJAX stuff only half works right. Google Maps + Blackberry == invaluable when travelling in another city.

Re:Filter out iPhone/Safari clients

[Space cowboy]

You need to get laid. Or out, even; live a little, anyway.

Simon

Hype, hype, hype

[Dan East]

Can someone please tell me how Apple pulls this off? I mean the frigging phone isn't even on the market yet, and we have Slashdot stories talking about redesigning the web to work on this thing. Give me a break. It appears "multitouch" is the next buzzword. The issues the article discuses, like mouse over events and hovering, isn't even specific to a multitouch panel in the first place. These are issues that have surfaced decades ago, and are typically addressed by a tap-hold style action.

Sorry, but this is just getting to me. It's like there is a certain percentage of the population (and press), that is willing to give Apple a wink and a nod, and pretend that every last freaking thing the iPhone encompasses was just invented by Apple. Wee! It can browse the web (never mind that its display has 1/2 the pixels of a VGA Pocket PC). Wow! It can play MP3s (boy the music sounds extra special somehow on an iPhone). Neat! It has a soft input panel (lets ignore that there is no tactile feedback, thus typing requires visual stimuli to make sure you're pressing the right areas). Yeehaw! What battery life (even though you can't swap batteries, preventing the user from purchasing as many extra batteries as necessary to meet their usage needs).

For every true innovation there's three caveats. Maybe once this thing actually hits the market we can get at least a small dose of reality.

Dan East

I expect that ...

[constantnormal]

... both AT&T and Apple (both significant advertisers) will provide some subtle inducements for site owners to provide a view of their pages that works well with the iPhone.

And if a site is well-designed, separating the "view" from the "data" using CSS or javascript or whatever, it should not require a massive overhaul of a site to provide an iPhone-friendly view. And it certainly shouldn't require any non-standard web page syntax to do so.

Anyone know what the user-agent string is for the iPhone?

Re:Filter out iPhone/Safari clients

[Anonymous Coward]

You should commit suicide.

No

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I don't test my site except with the browsers I use anyway. If your browser is broken, not my problem. Also, my UI is simple. I dislike using JS, and try to minimize it.

As a sidenote, I believe the iPhone will be an overhyped failure (not in sales, but as a product). My coworker disagrees with me. Other than shorting Apple stock, with the expectation that I can buy it back two quarters after the iPhone's arrival (after a long enough period of time that inital sales, which I expect to be extreme, will die down), is there any way you can recommend for the two of us to use for us to put money on it?

iPhone is not the only mobile device

[LBArrettAnderson]

The only things that are mentioned in this article about the question of whether or not we will change our websites to better suit the iPhone are things that are already present in current mobile devices!

Why do the majority of iPhone related articles on slashdot ignore the fact that it's nothing new?

Sure there is the zoom stuff, that's one difference, but that has nothing to do with me adapting my website for the iPhone and everything to do with the iPhone adapting itself to be able to view the full-version of websites instead of mobile-versions.

Well?

[machine of god]

Will you redesign your cities for IT???

Heck no

[gravis777]

I tried when the webtv came out, then i realized that if i just wrote with standards, while it may not look great on non-pc platforms, it looked good enough that you could get what you needed. Now if the page did not work at all on the iphone, that owuld be one thing, but my guess is that it will display just fine, just not be "Optimized" for it. And quite frankly, my site is probably not something people are going to want to be browsing from a mobile device anyway. I point this out to our users all the time when they grip about their blackberries not having all the features of Outlook - Your mobile device is there as a CONVIENIENCE, not as a replacement for your desktop / laptop. Quite frankly, I do not see the lure of mobile devices. I want my phone to make phone calls and do text messaging. I am not going to try to type out an e-mail on one of those tiny keypads (omg, have you tried typing on a Pearl?), the screen is really too small to read anything more than maybe a rss feed, data plans are astronomical, and speeds suck.

This reminds me of people complaining about the quality of stuff on the itunes music store. So before videos were not at full dvd resolution. Guess what, the ipod doesn't support that resolution. So what if the songs are at 128k, the majority of people are listening on earbuds anyways, not on a full stereo system.

The point is, the trouble of rewrittign a site for the iPhone is just not worth it unless you are something like CNN or BBC or Google. You are not going to be browsing your church website, pepsi.com or a porn site on your iPhone, are you? (Okay, SOMEONE will, but not the majority of people).

When I was even running highly popular sites, in the days when webtv was popular, with the hundreds of hits I got a day, I may get a hit once every two weeks from a webtv. I spent hours pulling out my hair trying to get it all looking pretty for them, and in the end, the tradeoff just wasn't there. It worked, it just was not optimized before.

I mean, I am sorry, but unless you are running one of the top 20 internet sites, there is just no reason to optimize your site for the iPhone. Its pointless, its a waste of time, and people are not going to want to view your myspace profile from a mobile device, you just are not that popular.

Apple thinks I shouldn't, so why should I?

[MBoffin]

One of the big marketing points they've been pushing in their ads for the iPhone is that you don't have to browse a "watered down Internet" on the iPhone. Go watch the ad called Watered Down.

If Apple thinks their browser is good/robust enough to browse the "real" web, then making my site look fine in Safari (which any web developer should be doing anyway) is all I should have to do.

Care to argue otherwise?

"Web 2.0" "Web 1.0"

[QuoteMstr]

Almost every "Web 2.0" site I visit actually works less well than equivalent sites did years ago. Now, photo galleries use ajax and javascript to switch pages, making it impossible to, say, open each page in a new tab and switch between them. Obscenely huge tables are loaded and sorted using javascript instead of letting me sort on the server side. Forum software prevents me from replying in a new window, or heck, even gracefully switching between threads. Keyboard support is often non-existent, since everyone thinks it's cool to reimplement the button element with sixteen DIVs and a Javascript widget framework.

You know what the worst is, though? The most useless example of sheep-like trend following?

Go to eBay.com's front page, and mouseover one of the menus at the top. The damn server PERFORMS AN AJAX QUERY to eBay to get the four items in the menu. They should know better.

Please, just wake me up when the "web 2.0" fad is over.

Re:Filter out iPhone/Safari clients

[dctoastman]

It's not saying that Safari won't work, it's saying that he doesn't want to deal with it. It's an out. This way, he can say that he doesn't support Safari, so any bugs on his website that only show up in "non-supported browser" won't be dealt with.

Built for Suckcess

[SuperKendall]

Not specifically for the iPhone. Maybe a simple low graphics version for PDA's and phones in general,

Then your site will suck on the iPhone compared to other sites. Why do that? Code as normal, make sure it works in safari, and make sure that even without a lot of mouse events the page still works OK (which you do anyway for those of us who like Javascript off by default, right?).

Shrink it down for other mobile phones, fine, but don't degrade my iPhone browsing just because you lump all mobile browsing together.

Heard some of that before haven't we?

[Savage-Rabbit]

It may look very slick, but technologically speaking it probably won't be earth-shattering. Neither was the iPod and to add insult to injury it even had fewer features than the competition which is exactly why watching it become a phenomenon annoyed the sh*t out of all of Apple's competitors.

With its pretty high price tag, lack of 3G, and very few third party apps (compared with BB, Windows Mobile, and Palm), I highly doubt that it will spark a "revolution" in web browsing. Having been around long enough to remember people saying the same about the iPod and that it wouldn't do a thing to change the music business beacuse it was a niche product that was way to expensive and would only become popular with Apple fanbois I'll take that prediction with a grain of salt. :-D

Mobile browsing is nothing new - Most major sites that people would frequently access from a mobile device (ie webmail, news/homepages, search engines, etc) already have mobile versions of their sites that work reasonably well. Actually many of them don't and those that do often have bad support and the same goes for client apps making use of web based services. It seems to me everybody is to busy trying to sell me video and TV streaming to my mobile handset over 3G to register that the kind of stuff which is really useful to a run-of-the-mill consumer is stuff like Google Maps Mobile on his/her phone. I still have not managed to get Google Maps or similar services to work on my own mobile which IMHO sucks since it, or a similar service, would have been very useful for navigating the last time I was in London. If the iPone becomes anything like the success the iPod is, even if it gains only a quarter as of the iPod's popularity, it will raise the bar on what people expect from a mobile phone. In that case I think we can expect *some* changes in the amount of attention developers and handset manufacturers pay to the needs and wants of the mobile browsing public. I won't expect a revolution any more than you do but significant changes might happen.

"Web 2.0 interface conventions"

[PietjeJantje]

Stop it. Just stop it. I know "web 2.0" is considered evil here and all problems are probably caused by it, but mouseover or a:hover is absolutely, completely unrelated to "web 2.0", nor is it an convention of it. That is just nonsense and the same as saying javascript or a div are web 2.0 inventions, just because someone used those elements for what he calls a web 2.0 site. Although I'd be pretty interested to find out how someone can either do Ajax calls with a:hover or how it does perform a social function for the community. Surely web 2.0 deserves all the cliche rants that this article results in here, but there is a time and place for things, and a different interface paradigm of the iphone and possible problems with mouseovers on existing web pages isn't one.

OMG, support teh iPhone!!!

[suv4x4]

We should definitely make sure the best ever experience for the iPhone! Right!

Some stats based upon web client hype as of late:

1. iPhone: 5 million publications of iPhone taking over the world
2. Safari for Win: 3.2 million benchmarks proving Safari is teh greatest Windows browser ever.
3. Firefox: 2.1 million "take the web back" propaganda blog posts.
...
...
...
...
612. IE6: 1 positive article and 40 million "I hate IE" quotes from IRC Efnet.

And now, let's see the web client stats:

1. IE6: 448 million people
2. IE7: 128 million people
3. Firefox: 96 million people
...
...
...
...
821. iPhone: 11 people (including Steve Jobs)

Puts things in perspective.

Limited "unlimited" service

[billstewart]

Most of the wireless plans I've seen that offer cheap "unlimited" service only allow it for the handheld device - you're not allowed to use it as a modem for your PC unless you're buying the >$80 plan. They can afford to offer $20 handheld-only unlimited, because you're only going to use so much data on a handheld.

The big problem, of course, is that cellphone companies are greedy and not visionary; they've been making scads of money selling 10-cent text messaging to teenagers and selling old-pager-priced data services to businesses, and they don't want to let go of that mindset just because the technology's changed and the users want something different. And so far it's working for them:-)

To cut them some slack, though, there are two parts to their cost - the underlying internet, for which there's really no excuse not to allow unlimited bandwidth, but also the hardware and operational cost for their radio equipment and spectrum. The per-bit cost for the radio side has come way down with the newer technologies, probably by a couple of orders of magnitude, but the capacity still has limits, and if they offered actually unlimited unlimited service at a cheap price, they'd burn through it pretty fast and their service would start to degrade.

I don't know if they know what the real capacity is, or what the real market is, but we've seen with several other technologies what happens when you offer people "unlimited" service without being prepared for customers having a different idea of what they want to do with the service than you did. I don't mind too much if they aren't willing to go there - but they shouldn't be calling their service "unlimited" when it's actually "very limited".