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Vodafone Move Invites Web Development Chaos
hoagiecat writes "Web developers want mobile phone users to be able to access their sites, but mobile browsers generally choke on heavyweight HTML put together for traditional Web browsers. A host of services have sprung up that allow two sites — one for mobile users, one for PC users — to coexist at the same URL, with the browser's user agent string distinguishing between the two. Vodafone has come at the problem from the other end, offering a new service that translates traditional Web pages into mobile-friendly ones on the fly — but it strips out the user agent in the process, breaking sites designed around the other strategy. And Web developers are mad. Will similar moves by other carriers disrupt this nascent Web development ecosystem?"
Web developers are going to have to get used to it. They've had years of being able to lazily code, develop and test for a single platform and ignore everyone else.
Now iPhone, along with Nokia's E and N series phones, firefox and the growing popularity of OSX, Linux and other alternatives are finally forcing Web developers to do what they should have been doing all along, coding and testing for actual w3c standards instead of Microsoft's ad-hoc proprietary "standards". (Yes I am aware that w3c standards need to be tightened a bit)