The Sad State of the Mobile Web

snydeq writes "Despite being the much better development platform for today's smartphones, open Web standards still face an uphill battle on mobile devices, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes, noting that here, as on the desktop, the main hurdle is scalability. But whereas successful Web development for the desktop is a matter of scaling up, mobile Web development calls for applications that can effectively scale down as well — an imperative that is fast making the state of the mobile Web 'even sadder,' McAllister writes. 'The more that modern Web applications take advantage of the new client-side technologies available in desktop browsers, the more the divide between the desktop Web and the mobile Web widens.' As a result, developers are forced to fall back on basic Web technologies — a tactic that too often translates simply into writing separate UIs for mobile users. 'The result? Mobile Web applications are in pretty much the same boat as they were when the first WAP-enabled handsets appeared: two separate development tracks, one for the desktop and one for mobile.'"

Comments

I have a better idea

[drinkypoo]

Use CSS as it was meant to be used, and stop using javascript and flash where they are unnecessary, and your sites will work just fine on mobile devices. Oh, that's hard? Sorry, your crap tools which produce shit code you don't understand don't impress me.

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Use CSS as it was meant to be used, and stop using javascript and flash where they are unnecessary, and your sites will work just fine on mobile devices. Oh, that's hard? Sorry, your crap tools which produce shit code you don't understand don't impress me.

It's a good thing that sites like Slashdot work great on all devices though... ...oh, wait...

Re:I have a better idea

[True Vox]

Actually,i'm writing from my SE w518a and things look pretty good, all things considered.

Re:I have a better idea

[Trevelyan]

On the iPhone, /.'s left and right page columns are removed (I guess by CSS) so that the centre story column takes up the full width of the screen.

The only real problem is that the nested comments quickly run out of width when the nesting gets too deep. Oh and that floating Full/Abbreviated/Hidden thing on the left doesn't work, but then I don't use it on the desktop either.

Re:I have a better idea

[JordanL]

Look at all the OpenSource solutions to rapid web development.

• Concrete
• Joomla
• SilverStripe
• Etc.

None of those programs even have a core that's close to being mobile enabled, and no one using them is going to create one. I think the largest problem is simply that the tools most people use for their websites are too bloated, complicated and poorly written to create an effective mobile web.

For example, I have a client that I just last week had to broach the subject of a mobile enabled version of their Joomla 1.5 site with. They were adamant that a version that cellphones could use was absolutely important, but because of the HUGE framework Joomla uses, and the relatively small number of functions a mobile version would need to perform, I basically opted to build a very tiny CMS that would mirror the data from the Joomla database.

You may thumb your nose at web developers who create ridiculous sites and clearly don't know what the hell they're doing, but you are only displaying your own ignorance. Clients drive website development, not developers, and for the vast majority of clients mobile web is something they just don't care about. And because of that nearly all of the tools available exclude the mobile web.

As a web developer, I rarely have to touch the subject of the mobile web, and when I do I basically have to present my clients with two options: 1. you pay me a non-trivial sum to create a second version of your site just for the mobile web or 2. you are restricted to sites built in tools which are mobile web enabled.

I can tell you from years of experience, unless it's part of their business model clients go for option 3: fuck the mobile web.

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, ever try to render a web page on the blackberry browser?
Ever try to add a TABLE? Or a 'br' line break?

How about when you have no choice but to deal with supporting older devices like WM5... and you have to replace all your PNGs with GIFs, and you can't use a background image with transparency...

CSS or no, older mobile browsers can be horrible at rendering basic HTML/CSS. The BB Browser specifically goes out of it's way to remove spacing and compact the page into a vertical column.

So now you need to have three sites...
One for older mobile devices, one for newer mobile devices with a small screen and no support for auto-refresh, and one for the desktop.

Re:I have a better idea

[Interoperable]

Yeah for sure, there needs to be more emphasis on standards compliance and simple pages that convey information. I'm not going to sit though a 20 second flash intro and then fight my way though animated menus that render behind other page elements. If your website can't serve it's function as a means to convey information then I'm going elsewhere.

Re:I have a better idea

[ColdWetDog]

Actually,i'm writing from my SE w518a and things look pretty good, all things considered.

Bah, you're so confused by Slashdot's crummy formatting that you thing you're on the NPR website.

Re:I have a better idea

[fermion]

I agree completely. The sad state of the mobile web reflects the sad state of the web overall, and it stems from the design decision to focus on context, not visualization. That is,HTML defines a context for a header, or table, or citation, but does not impose a rendering of those contexts. This, of course, is not a good thing if one is developing an application front end, which is what MS and others were interested in doing.

CSS allowed control of the visualization, but by the time it came out there were all sorts of other hacks, which developers used even in cases where visualization was not important. This meant that a web page was often fixed on a certain platform, certain display size, and certain user assumptions. This would not have been such a problem if the developers had just used HTML, and, where possible, lived with the fact that they were not going to be in control.

Re:I have a better idea

[dword]

I sure hope the Google Docs dev team doesn't find you. You're not impressed by my cool JavaScript and fancy effects that make my website more warm and fuzzy? Well, I'm not impressed by your crappy mobile that can't even display web pages properly. We're still hurting our backs trying to write JS and CSS compatible with IE6 and you're bitching that it doesn't work on your "mobile device". Well, guess what: my fancy website is cooler than your so-called fancy mobile so-called device. Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to make everything look and behave properly? And on top of all that shit, you also have to make it standards-compliant and on top of all that shit there are tons of other "rules" you have to follow to have usable code and on top of all that shit you have to write the code properly and on top of all that shit you have to have a life and take a break once in a while. Do you imagine how much a single "proper" web page would cost? Well guess what: If you don't like the fact that my business' website displays fine for 99% of my visitors but doesn't display properly on Motorola X4358V HRH, take your money somewhere. And guess what: we're not pefect and we're still trying to create near-perfect web pages that work on horribly broken software.

In other words: it would be nice if the real world would be as you want it, your arrogant, hypocrite fuck.

With love,
Professional web developer.

Re:I have a better idea

[R_Dorothy]

I've just finished building a new website for a startup and mobile was a consideration from the start. As a result the page content is all modularised and there is a layout+css switcher for mobile devices. Some of the fancy stuff doesn't work as well or look as good on the mobile site but all the functionality is there - with and without JavaScript (progressive enhancement really comes into its own here). This means that going forward there is only one site and two layouts to maintain, a vast improvement on the last time I tried to retro-fit mobile layouts to a site and settled on a similar solution to the parent which is essentially to build a second site.

I'll echo other posters by saying that /. blows HARD on a mobile.

Re:I have a better idea

[xonar]

Amen

Re:I have a better idea

[JordanL]

See, this only works if you use no modules/components/plugins/extentions/etc. with whatever rapid development framework you're working with, because I can guarantee you that the modularized code isn't going to export mobile friendly code. If I could trust extended pieces of code, I would simply manage layouts as you describe.

Most clients just aren't big enough to warrant all the small fires mobile development creates.

Re:I have a better idea

[jellomizer]

So you are saying you should only code the hard way? Isn't the point of these tools even CSS is to make programming tasks easier? I can see flash as it is not widely supported however most web enabled mobile devices that are worth developing for have Javascript, especially if they support CSS. I actually push for heavy Javascript and less on Server side processing as for the most part the client even a smart phone has excess processing power and it can handle doing most of the legwork and just use the server to process data. Actually this actually makes the pages run a lot faster even over dialup. As well it keeps the server load low and less server side processing make it much easier to handle security.

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Moore's Law should fix this problem in a couple of years. Remember that screen resolution (pixels per square centimeter) will increase along with processing power; the screens themselves may get a little larger, but they have a ways to go before becoming too large for a one-hand device.

Re:I have a better idea

[drinkypoo]

None of those programs even have a core that's close to being mobile enabled, and no one using them is going to create one.

I've never looked at any of those, but with Drupal it's fairly trivial to create an acceptable mobile experience.

You may thumb your nose at web developers who create ridiculous sites and clearly don't know what the hell they're doing, but you are only displaying your own ignorance.

You're being a stupid ass. I'm talking about shit like using javascript on a link that just opens a new page, when an HREF would have done as well and can be manipulated by JS through the DOM. I'm talking about shit like using flash for rollover links. I'm not talking about shit like google docs, which can reasonably be expected to fail on castrated browsers. The vast majority of websites out there would work fine on a mobile browser if they simply made intelligent use of CSS, and less unnecessary use of javascript. Every time I have to have javascript to submit a form that results in a page load anyway, I know that somewhere out there a big fucking idiot designed a website. Every time I have to load a flash movie to navigate a website, the web dies a little.

I can tell you from years of experience, unless it's part of their business model clients go for option 3: fuck the mobile web.

Again, in Drupal it's simple enough as having a mobile theme, using one of the many canned methods available to make sure that mobile users get to see it, and you're done. Since mobile browsers are simple, mobile themes are simple, and it's little extra work. This is part of the whole point of using a CMS, and if yours doesn't let you trivially support displaying ordinary content to mobile devices then it's pathetic.

Re:I have a better idea

[6Yankee]

I wouldn't have put it quite as bluntly, but yes.

I'm working on a custom skin for phpBB, and by using sensible HTML and CSS I've got something that looks good on the desktop and on IE Mobile. I use Javascript to pull in all the pretty stuff like avatars on the desktop version; mobile devices (and IE6, which gets the mobile stylesheet) never need see it, and the site is usable without it.

My skin is actually usable on a handheld, though it still needs some work. phpBB's own is a complete mess, and there are some things that (like sending PMs) that you just can't do because the layout's so horribly broken.

The forum members who tested it, on iphones, crackberries and all sorts of devices, reported that these all displayed the mobile version fine. It took some crafty stylesheet switching, which I nicked from somewhere, but it can be done.

The fly in the ointment is the crackberry - I have to do PHP parsing in the template specifically to catch it, and seems every different retailer's version of every kind of crackberry has different settings for CSS (including "disabled"). As a developer, there's nothing I can do about that - and it's completely boneheaded.

Re:I have a better idea

[JordanL]

You're being a stupid ass.

So you call the actual Web Developer a "stupid ass" then proceed to register specific about things that have nothing to do with the topic at hand?

Your complete dismissal of javascript for form unless you are avoiding page-loads displays your lack of knowledge in the area. Simply put, I always use Javascript to assist in validating forms before they are submitted... and that actually is to avoid page-loads: error pages.

Again, in Drupal it's simple enough as having a mobile theme, using one of the many canned methods available to make sure that mobile users get to see it, and you're done. Since mobile browsers are simple, mobile themes are simple, and it's little extra work. This is part of the whole point of using a CMS, and if yours doesn't let you trivially support displaying ordinary content to mobile devices then it's pathetic.

Lets all bow down to Drupal! /sarcasm

As I noted in another post, and alluded to in the post you are replying to, the use of specific templates to manage a mobile version of the website is only adequate if every modularized component of the CMS also has the ability to export in a mobile version, and unless you write ALL of the custom functionality by hand, which is incredibly expensive (we're taking 5-6 figure sites) this is not going to happen.

In essence, you're bitching to a professional about a problem you don't understand suggesting a solution which doesn't work because layers upon layers of people have decided that it's not their job to make up for the inadequate hardware/software included on mobile devices.

And the worst part is that you're bitching by telling the professional that he's wrong, which in almost any field is a display of your own stupidity.

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish it were that simple, but frankly it's not. Not all of the mobile web browsers pass in the handheld media type. So even if you go through the effort of figuring putting the proper CSS in place and create a good function design and implementation for handheld devices, you still need something to pick up on what browser, OS, or mix of both is running and conditionally include the CSS file you need. Certainly, it can and has been done, but it's not as simple as creating a single CSS file reference for the standard media type you would expect.

Re:I have a better idea

[Yvan256]

I think you forgot the "Use CSS as it was meant to be used, and stop using javascript [...] where (it is) unnecessary" part.

Slashdot is a mess. Authors should be ashamed.

Re:I have a better idea

[mcgrew]

Most sites could be written in plain vanilla HTML with no scripting, flash, etc whatever and could be easily read and navigated by any device.

The problem is people have forgotten how to code in HTML. The pity is HTML is dirt-simple and people still can't be bothered to learn it, preferring to use a bad tool to do it for them (and face it, all of the web development tools suck).

Re:I have a better idea

[Yvan256]

Don't force users to have javascript to fill forms. Yes, if it's enabled then use it to validate the form data and avoid page loads, but also let the form without it, you need to validate the form on the server anyway.

You need to have something that works with the bare minimum, then if you want you can enhance it with Javascript.

Re:I have a better idea

[implowry]

In other words, use HTML as a document markup language instead of an application platform. I thought for quite a while that forcing the square web application peg into the round document hole is a bad idea. We'd be better off if someone created an open web application standard that everyone would actually adopt. Perhaps something engineered with the capabilities that we want built in, instead of hacking (though some of the HTML/Javascript hacks are quite elegant) an application framework onto a document one.

Clearly there is a demand for this sort of thing hence Flash and Silverlight and Java applets before that.

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What is very funny is that you say all of this while your profile links to a site that isn't finished, doesn't work on my mobile phone, and is simply generated from a template by one of those tools you decry here.

Re:I have a better idea

[suggsjc]

I guess it all depends on features and scope, but the "mobile web" is only as complicated as you want to make it. If you have good markup, then things translate very well to mobile phones.

In general, there are two types of mobile browsers. Ones that try to emulate the "real web" (ie. iPhone/Safari, Opera Mini, etc) and ones that just strip out all of the css and just display the text (ie. Blackberry browser).

I've found that if you take a look at your site without css enabled (in Firefox, View -> Page Style -> No Style), if the site looks good and is functional, then you'll be "ok" on mobile phones. If your site looks horrible, then you should probably not consider yourself a web developer...

Re:I have a better idea

[jdgeorge]

My impression is that the solution to the mobile-unfriendly tooling that some companies have chosen is to create an iPhone app for their sites, which I assume is cheaper than retooling their real Web sites to actually work well for mobile platforms. Do you think this is an accurate assessment?

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You may wanna read up on mobile, many don't fully support CSS, and what's worse they don't document what they cut out. So it's not as simple as just using CSS and not use javascript/flash. Though I agree whole heartedly, stop the heavy use of flash and javascript while we're at it.

Re:I have a better idea

[Alidar]

I think I love you.

Re:I have a better idea

[Garrett Fox]

Speaking as a non-Web-developer: It seems like using these new fancy tools isn't all that helpful, if using them creates lots of integration work (as in the angry post above), with the main benefit being flashy effects. I've seen sites that advertise a game or something, that rely on an elaborate animated Flash menu that would've offered the information just fine as plain HTML. Why demand Flash and cookies and Java and .NET when all I want is to view some text and pictures?

Re:I have a better idea

[mcgrew]

Well, guess what: my fancy website is cooler than your so-called fancy mobile so-called device

I need your website a lot less than your advertisers need my eyeballs. And gues wat? NOBODY visits any web site because it's "cool". Stop trying to impress me, because you're not going to do it with a "cool" web site. You'll only annoy me. You're putting the cart before the horse. You are expendable, your audience is not.

In other words: it would be nice if the real world would be as you want it, your arrogant, hypocrite fuck.

I find that often times incompetent people will curse at those who dare call them on it.

Re:I have a better idea

[TheRaven64]

That's okay. Slashdot has those problems in desktop Safari too.

Re:I have a better idea

[Disgruntled Goats]

Oh and that floating Full/Abbreviated/Hidden thing on the left doesn't work, but then I don't use it on the desktop either.

That thing hasn't worked in ages. It's been broken for at least 3 or 4 months.

Re:I have a better idea

[FyRE666]

In other news: Beer is crap when you serve it in a wine glass.

It's not just the design and layout, the content and navigation requirements are often different for mobile and desktop browsers. Sure you can cram a long story into a 4" screen, but a mobile user often has different requirements (and time) to a desktop user. A mobile version of a news site would probably want to serve abbreviated or rewritten versions of the stories, or geo-location based stories, or whatever.

One size doe not fit all. Get over it.

Re:I have a better idea

[dword]

I think you are mistaking me for some sloppy developer that uses duct tape to stitch some HTML tag soup into something that resembles a blog or a shopping cart. And gues wat? [sic] I've earned MOST of my customers because my website is cooler than others. You have no idea what you're talking about, yet you just butt in the discussion like the OP. There are things like design patterns, test driven development, usability testing, etc. that make up a great application that looks and feels nice and is easy to use. People use my website for many hours during the day, so I have to do my best to make their work easier.

And gues wat? [sic] Many people visit my website instead of the competittors' because it's cooler than theirs.

Often (not always):
#1: rounded corners are cool
#2: complement colors are cool
#3: not having to see the whole page reload just to see an extra word is cool (ajax)
#4: clicking on something to show/hide elements instantly is cool

Compare this ugly website to this ugly website. If you don't feel the difference, you are a stone cold redneck. They're both ugly, but any human being can "feel" the difference.

I find that often times incompetent people will curse at those who dare call them on it.

And gues wat? [sic] That means absolutely nothing (it just says that many incompetents curse on others, it doesn't say anything about why you quoted me). Even if it did, it still would still mean nothing coming from you.
And gues wat? [sic] I find that often times incompetent people will try to enter discussions. I don't care if that doesn't make sense, what you said doesn't make any sense either

Please go back to your corner and read a bit about eye candy before I sue you for copyright infringement because you copied what I said without using <quote> tags.

Re:I have a better idea

[nametaken]

Every time I have to have javascript to submit a form that results in a page load anyway, I know that somewhere out there a big fucking idiot designed a website. Every time I have to load a flash movie to navigate a website, the web dies a little.

This is a little harsh. .Net forms and their button controls frequently use javascript for client side validation before server side validation on submit. They fail gracefully in browsers with javascript disabled. That's not developer incompetence, that's a good thing. It prevents unnecessary page reloads, server hits, etc. Flash navigation I'm a not a fan of, but it does often look nicer than anything that can be done without it. Among other things I think people avoid it now for spidering reasons.

Re:I have a better idea

[Hal_Porter]

Use CSS as it was meant to be used, and stop using javascript and flash where they are unnecessary, and your sites will work just fine on mobile devices. Oh, that's hard? Sorry, your crap tools which produce shit code you don't understand don't impress me.

Can't agree with this more. CSS is fine if you want to make things look better on browsers that support it. Still there are many, many browsers that don't support it running on mobile devices. Hell blind people use a screen reader that definitely does not support CSS - a good test for screen reader support is seeing if your website is usable on a text browser like Lynx. You can't depend on CSS for layout unless you exclude all these.

Not everyone in the world uses Firefox, just like not everyone uses IE. Even if IE6 disappeared you still can't assume that everyone has a browser with CSS support. So if you use it to make things look better on compatible browsers that's fair enough. If you make a website that is unusable without it, you're excluding more than just IE6 users.

Re:I have a better idea

[blueZ3]

And stop referring my phone to a "mobile" version automatically with no opt out. What's currently driving me crazy is not Flash (I avoid those sites anyway) but being forced into a mobile (read: limited) version of the full site when my phone is perfectly capable of rendering all the images, menus, etc.

The "dumbed down" version should be an option--maybe even the default option--but quit using my user agent string to force me into the mobile site ghetto.

Re:I have a better idea

[TheLostSamurai]

Wow, you have some serious issues man.

In other words: it would be nice if the real world would be as you want it, your [sic] arrogant, hypocrite fuck.

Yeah I know it is not from this post but Pot, meet Kettle. Oh, and I added a [sic] tag that you seem to be so fond of.

What really amazes me is that you seem to honestly believe that the sun shines out of your ass. You are completely convinced of your own superiority yet offer no compelling evidence to support this stance.

Many people visit my website instead of the competittors' [sic] because it's cooler than theirs.

So please enlighten us, what is your cool website? And BTW, there are no rules for cool, ask a real artist.

With love, Professional web developer.

This is my favorite thing you've said. I don't mean to belittle an entire swath of people who have the same career as you, just people like you who think 'Web Developer' is some how an elevated position in the realm of programming. You are not a Software Engineer nor a Computer Scientist, and based on the way you talk about the work you do you are not even really a programmer. Don't get me wrong, there are many actual programmers that work on web related projects, but you are a scripter at best.

Seriously, if you had even the slightest idea of the problems faced by real software folk, you would realize that your arrogance and self righteous attitude are completely unfounded.

before I sue you for copyright infringement because you copied what I said without using 'quote' tags.

Huh?

Re:I have a better idea

[Hal_Porter]

You have no idea what you're talking about, yet you just butt in the discussion like the OP. There are things like design patterns, test driven development, usability testing, etc. that make up a great application that looks and feels nice and is easy to use.

What about accessibility? If your website is not usable with Lynx, most likely it is not usable with a screen reader. That means blind people can't use it.

Actually W3C guidelines say

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-new-technologies

Ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies are not supported or are turned off.

Although content developers are encouraged to use new technologies that solve problems raised by existing technologies, they should know how to make their pages still work with older browsers and people who choose to turn off features.

Checkpoints:

6.1 Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document. [Priority 1]
When content is organized logically, it will be rendered in a meaningful order when style sheets are turned off or not supported.

6.2 Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes. [Priority 1]

6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page. [Priority 1]
For example, ensure that links that trigger scripts work when scripts are turned off or not supported (e.g., do not use "javascript:" as the link target). If it is not possible to make the page usable without scripts, provide a text equivalent with the NOSCRIPT element, or use a server-side script instead of a client-side script, or provide an alternative accessible page as per checkpoint 11.4. Refer also to guideline 1.

6.4 For scripts and applets, ensure that event handlers are input device-independent. [Priority 2]
Refer to the definition of device independence.

6.5 Ensure that dynamic content is accessible or provide an alternative presentation or page. [Priority 2]

For example, in HTML, use NOFRAMES at the end of each frameset. For some applications, server-side scripts may be more accessible than client-side scripts.

Re:I have a better idea

[cnvandev]

And gues wat? NOBODY visits any web site because it's "cool". Stop trying to impress me, because you're not going to do it with a "cool" web site. You'll only annoy me. You're putting the cart before the horse.

Clearly, you've never met a teenager. There's different website styles for different people; some people want things that are flashy and cool, some people just want to check their e-mail. The point is applying the same design philosophy to both projects would be crazy.

Re:I have a better idea

[Hal_Porter]

A long time ago someone paid me to work on a web based booking system. We used ASP and MSSQL on the server to generate the pages. Now back then we had a rule everything must be validated on the server because that was the only place we could trust.

I actually had a down level version of the page that was pure HTML that would work on a IE 3.0 (like I say this was a long time ago) which I didn't trust to do anything more complex than that. There was also Javascript for form validation but I only served that to a browser that I knew supported it.

Re:I have a better idea

[Hal_Porter]

I've found that if you take a look at your site without css enabled (in Firefox, View -> Page Style -> No Style), if the site looks good and is functional, then you'll be "ok" on mobile phones. If your site looks horrible, then you should probably not consider yourself a web developer...

I checked the my company's website - the only website I maintain these days - and it looks exactly the same if I do this. I still can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Re:I have a better idea

[Threni]

Isn't the problem that browsers are shit; that they were designed to display text and graphics and are ill-suited for what they're being used for? Isn't what's actually required bits of code which describe what to do at a high level and it's up to some sort of browser replacement app, cranked for speed on whatever platform and designed to degrade gracefuly if your screen is small/black and white/narrow, or if you don't have 3d or a mouse or whatever?

Re:I have a better idea

[glennpratt]

I really don't see how the OP was missing the topic at hand. You're original claim was that OSS CMSs don't handle mobile well, but then failed to mention Drupal.

Drupal core and almost all contrib modules output simple, valid XHTML Strict by default. You can override themes for every bit of Drupal and it's modules within your own theme. Customizing a simplified theme for mobile browsers is trivial and far easier than your suggestion, writing you OWN CMS!

When you do that, you're playing right into what this article is talking about, partitioning the web between functional desktop sites and mobile sites that provide little more than a presence.

Re:I have a better idea

[dyefade]

And gues wat? NOBODY visits any web site because it's "cool".

You're so wrong with this I don't know where to begin. The server logs from the company I work for, with their millions of hits and millions of £/€ in revenue strong suggest that you're utterly, irrecoverably wrong.

GP hit it perfectly the first time.

Re:I have a better idea

[mattack2]

Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to make everything look and behave properly? And on top of all that shit, you also have to make it standards-compliant...

Wait, if it's standards-compliant, it would by definition look and behave properly in browsers that are also standards-compliant. So it sounds to me like you're really having to add extra hacks for bad browsers... which by definition AREN'T standards compliant.

Why not just do everything standards-compliant in the first place?

Re:I have a better idea

[Yvan256]

Extremely bad. For mobile, for usability and for indexing.

Re:I have a better idea

[Hal_Porter]

I'm not sure if you know what I'm saying. My company's website doesn't use CSS - it's just HTML. So turning off stylesheets has no effect. So it looks the same with styles turned off.

Now for mobile, usability and indexing this is good. On the other hand I'm using the browser's default stylesheet so the site is a bit ugly.

Re:I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the whole point of a user agent string to identify capabilities to the server?

And can't people change the user agent string?

Then change it to something more desktop-worthy if you want! Simple!

Re:I have a better idea

[Yvan256]

I thought you meant the website was built with a table-based layout and font tags or something like Flash or Java.

If your website is so plain as to look like something from the HTML 3.0 days, well, that's not too good either from the marketing/corporate image point of view... But without having seen the website in question it's hard to tell.

Do you mind giving us the URL?

Re:I have a better idea

[AmberBlackCat]

It sucks on the DSi, even though sites like IMDB and Amazon.com work on it and I even get Facebook's site to load, kind of...

Re:I have a better idea

[AmberBlackCat]

As a web developer, I rarely have to touch the subject of the mobile web, and when I do I basically have to present my clients with two options: 1. you pay me a non-trivial sum to create a second version of your site just for the mobile web or 2. you are restricted to sites built in tools which are mobile web enabled.

I can tell you from years of experience, unless it's part of their business model clients go for option 3: fuck the mobile web.

There's also option 4: fuck you...

Re:I have a better idea

[uuddlrlrab]

You know, I really do think this is all about the utter lack of standards when it comes to mobiles. IMHO, user agent is one of the most reliable things to help a web programmer distinguish between full-fledged browsers (clients fully or mostly W3C compliant, and in theory, able to handle javascript/flash/etc) and lower power clients (mobiles, embedded platforms, etc, that can't deal with cpu intensive stuff). Ideally, there should be a W3 browser standard, where the UA has an optional series of "flags" or codes appended to the end, that could tell whether it's text only, js capable (or generally client-script capable), embedded, etc...

Obviously, I can see some security risk in including this in the UA, but I'd hope programmers would be able to make secure browsing clients that don't just send the UA or other details to unsolicited client info requests, and the same for the OS overall. And, of course, there's the older-than-the-internets issue of edumacating users not to fall for the typical phishing shit, not to visit risky sites with platforms lacking security, etc, etc...But that's a debate for another time.

Feel free to shred this idea to pieces, in true /. fashion.

Re:I have a better idea

[True Vox]

Really? Huh, I wonder if the W518a is just a sweet web browsing phone then. I mean, it's not PERFECT, but it's perfectly usable.

Re:I have a better idea

[AmberBlackCat]

I wouldn't know, as I've never had unlimited Internet on a phone, but I think a lot of the problems come from Slashdot's javascript. Firefox has warnings of the scripts taking a long time to go, and if you tell Firefox to wait for it, it seems to lock up the browser until the script loads. Maybe the DSi just doesn't handle non-loading webpage elements so well.

Re:I have a better idea

[ajlisows]

I can pretty much "Code" in HTML (My ability to conceive an aesthically pleasing design is another matter...) but seriously.....why? If I want to drop an image onto a page, what is the difference between me typing ..[img src="./images/gross/goatse.jpg" alt="This is disgusting" width="100" height="100" /] (Note, actual markup mangled because I'm editing in HTML) and Simply dragging and dropping the "Image" control onto the page and typing some stuff in the properties box. Either way I open the page in multiple browsers to see if it looks the way I want it, and it is done. If it doesn't look right, I either have to mess around with the WYSIWYG editor or mess with the HTML myself. Either way pretty much works.

I tend to do most of the really mundane stuff (Like dropping images) using a WYSIWYG editor and then fine tune it "Manually" by messing with the markup. It is easier for me that way. If it is easier for someone else to do the fine tuning using the editor, good for them. That doesn't make them a worse web designer....

I think the issue is in the fact that people seem to be impressed by "Whiz Bang" effects so designers are forced to pour them on. A good example out of my personal experience was early on Craig's List vs. Ebay. I suggested to quite a few people that they use Craig's List instead. They took one look at the site and its minimalist design (Which is awesome, in my opinion) and automatically got the wrong impression. I even had one person tell me "I am not buying my phone from a place that looks like a back alley abortion clinic". Pretty pictures and effects won the day until they realized Ebay was crap and finally listened to me. ;)

Re:I have a better idea

[theTerribleRobbo]

Don't force users to have javascript to fill forms. Yes, if it's enabled then use it to validate the form data and avoid page loads, but also let the form without it, you need to validate the form on the server anyway.

You need to have something that works with the bare minimum, then if you want you can enhance it with Javascript.

THIS. THIS, DAMNIT.

The <a href="javascript:validateForm();">Submit</a> thing I see all over the place makes me want to punch people in the mouth. Bind to the form's "submit" event and add a layer of validation; don't just completely stonewall anyone that doesn't have javascript enabled / capability.

Re:I have a better idea

[ksemlerK]

Hack your device, and install a custom radio/ROM/SPL. XDA Developers, Howard Forums, and PPC Geeks will tell you pretty much anything you could possibly waste to know about your chosen platform. With a custom ROM, (or registry edits), you can easily identify as a desktop running Firefox if you want. (or just run SkyFire and surf the web on your phone like you would on your desktop. It has zoom, flash, and silverlight 2.0 support too, but NetFlix and Hulu arent supported. (but if you forge your UA, you can run HuLu).

To bypass the HuLu blockout, change your UID to read:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Unless HuLu wants to block appx 33% of the market running WinXP, that string as your User Agent will get you through, no problem

Re:I have a better idea

[Hal_Porter]

If your website is so plain as to look like something from the HTML 3.0 days, well, that's not too good either from the marketing/corporate image point of view... But without having seen the website in question it's hard to tell.

The website is retro, but the company does deal with rather retro technologies. Certainly I've had people say they like it because it is so low tech.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/

That being said I could add some CSS to make it look more modern on browsers that support it.

Re:I have a better idea

[True Vox]

Eh, I'll buy that. I'm curious - speaking of long loading Javascript, how does your DSi handle digg.com?

Re:I have a better idea

[mcgrew]

Even a teenager needs more than "cool" unless teenagers have changed in the last forty years. Judging from my own kids (who were teens just a few years ago), they haven't. And most people over 25 don't have a clue what the current crop of teens think is cool.

And some sites think they're catering to teens and throwing away potential customers. Boost Mobile, for instance. Their site works at "cool" but is almost unreadable to a middle aged person, as the gray on black motif is unreadable to most geezers. But it's incredibly stupid, they're going after the wrong demographic. Teenagers don't give a rat's ass how big the phone bill is, and that's Boost's strength with their $50 monthly no-minutes needed plan.

Re:I have a better idea

[cnvandev]

...which is a clear example of using the wrong website style for the audience. My point was that some people are impressed by a "cool" website. Hell, even the Hamster Dance made it on the radio.

Re:I have a better idea

[mcgrew]

I tend to do most of the really mundane stuff (Like dropping images) using a WYSIWYG editor and then fine tune it "Manually"

IMO that's the best way to do it. An editor is fast but bad, you can go back and fix it later. Many folks don't realize just how horrible editors are, but I'm sure you do since you actully fix the code.

I haven't been to Craig's List so I don't know about it, but minimal can be beautiful or ugly. Google doesn't have a problem with minimal, its minimalism is elegant. Compare that to bing, it looks like a hillbilly's house with plastic pink flamingos and conctrete frogs compared to Google's minimalism.

Re:I have a better idea

[ajlisows]

Comparing Bing to a Hillbilly house? Now you are making me mad, insulting Hillbillys like that. ;)

Re:I have a better idea

[AmberBlackCat]

I tried that and never managed to get the site to load. It seems strange that sites like MySpace and Facebook have managed to make mobile versions that work fine on mobile devices, while sites like Digg and Slashdot that are supposed to cater to people, who think they are technologically elite, have not managed to do this.

Re:I have a better idea

[True Vox]

OK, so at least there's some (crappy) consistency. :)

Outdated?

[tpwch]

Is this really true anymore? With devices like the Nokia N900 being released, that has full-featured browsers that can handle everything a desktop browsers can, I doubt this will be an issue much longer.

Re:Outdated?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Mobile Web generally though is that some people have inappropriate sites for pretty much any browser but which have been hacked together to just about make it through on desktops but as a result require loads of power behind them. These sort of sites just make mobile devices fall down. Slashdot is prime example - have you ever tried to come on here on an ipod touch or other mobile device? Hell, it doesn't even work on the Wii, which is a bit more than a standard mobile browser...

Re:Outdated?

[Jellybob]

Modern smartphones can handle just about anything you throw at them. The UI is the problem, since what works on a 22" widescreen monitor, with a keyboard and mouse, doesn't work on a 9" touchscreen.

We're not going to see alternative mobile UIs going away any time soon, and that in my opinion is a good thing. The desktop version will work if you really want all the features that it comes with, but it's not going to be the optimal way of using things.

Native mobile applications are also a big factor here, and are often a far better choice so long as you have the man power (or money) to produce them, since they give you a far more targetted UI, which can integrate with a phone's hardware features to provide something even smoother.

Re:Outdated?

[Sockatume]

I don't think that you can take a device the size of a small paperback and claim it's representative of what mobile phones can do. The hardware performance will probably trickle down to cheaper devices in five years, but phones with 2-inch screens and a mechanical keypad continue to dominate the market for good reasons. Most users don't feel the need to carry a large touchscreen slab for the amount of web browsing they do, and getting a web app to work properly on a small button-driven device without simply feeding them a completely different version is nontrivial.

Re:Outdated?

[TheRaven64]

The iPhone uses the same rendering engine as Safari. The Nokia 770 shipped with a version of Opera that could render almost everything that the desktop one could, but was painfully slow with some sites (e.g. Google Maps), but that was more to do with the slow CPU than anything else. My cheap Nokia phone has a WebKit browser too, and the tiny screen is more of a limiting factor than the browser's capabilities. Flash support on mobile devices has been a little tricky until not, but now Adobe is pushing hard to get full Flash supported on everything with an ARM CPU that's going to stop being a problem soon. In terms of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, handheld devices are just as capable as ten-year-old desktops with small screens running modern software.

Note, however, that TFA talked about web apps, rather than web sites. Web apps are typically very JavaScript heavy, and so may have problems on mobile devices if the JS engine can't keep up. This is completely different to the WAP era, however. Back then, mobile browsers couldn't browse normal sites. Now they can, but they may experience problems on a few web apps that do a lot of the client side (these didn't even exist in the WAP days).

Re:Outdated?

[Chrisq]

I find it specially ironic that one of the links provided in the summary says

It's also the engine found in both Apple's iPhone and Google Android, arguably the two most important mobile Web platforms today.

That means Google Chrome isn't yet another browser to support,

Which in fact contradicts the whole assertion of the article

Re:Outdated?

[mcgrew]

Is this really true anymore?

Yes. I have a Motorola i776, and with many sites it complains about not having enough memory. That includes slashdot. I won't work with wikipedia at all. The phone's browser controls are horrible too, for instance there's no slash and no back button. I only bough the thing (cost $100) a few months ago.

Re:Outdated?

[koiransuklaa]

Exactly, I think it was Nokias Ari Jaaksi who said something like this several years ago: "there is only one web. If your device does not work there, you lose". That was pretty much true then, and it's even more true today.

Re:Outdated?

[Jellybob]

I don't think this is actually an issue though.

Most of the people I know who have phones using keypads and a 2-inch screen don't use them for browsing the web, and have no intention to do so.

If I'm building a mobile web application, I'm going to target the touch screen devices, because those are what people who actually use mobile phones to browse the web are using.

Re:Outdated?

[jimfrost]

Ask any random iPhone user if they browse the web. There is a good reason why iPhone users have 5 times the data usage of any other....

Prior to the iPhone I rarely hit the web with my phone (it had to be an outright emergency). The plan made it stupid expensive and I got grey hairs waiting. But having seen how useful the iTouch was when it was on the net I went for an iPhone (AT&T be damned. No, really, damn AT&T). Having a useful web browser pretty much everywhere has been a godsend.

It's kind of a crappy phone, but it's a remarkably good browser despite the form factor. That should only get better across the industry as the devices and software gets more capable.

Re:Outdated?

[Cajun Hell]

Native mobile applications are also a big factor here, and are often a far better choice

I fear you might be right, but it sure sucks. We went from an app ported to every platform, to a single app using middleware called "browser", and now we're headed back to an app for every platform? Ugh. There's got to be some way to avoid this bullshit.

Re:Outdated?

[bemymonkey]

The N900 hasn't even been released yet, and it's already outdated (not that that's going to stop me from buying one...). It's one of the first smartphones to play in-browser Flash video halfway decently, but what about when Youtube switches to H264 only... what about when the next technology after AJAX/CSS/Javascript comes out?

Sure, the browsers on new smartphones are great, but they're still a long way away from being able to display pages the same way as a desktop or laptop... mostly because of CPU constraints, as far as I can tell.

Re:Outdated?

[bemymonkey]

Tell me about it... Opera 9.7 on my WinMo 6.1 phone has a heart attack every time I even think about Slashdot :(

Re:Outdated?

[Tyr_7BE]

I really don't understand this. Just about every iPhone user on the web loves to shout to the heavens about how fantastic the browser is. What makes it so great? Technically it's the most capable browser on a mobile device, but not by very much. Take a look at this http://www.quirksmode.org/webkit.html . Iris browser and Bolt browser both fare very well, but nobody ever talks about them like they do with Safari. I tried Opera Mini 5 the other day and I was extremely impressed. It basically gave me web pages like my desktop does. Still, it gets no love. I have one of the newest blackberries, and its browser gets me by just fine. I make it tell web pages that it's a firefox browser, and I get full versions of pages like I would at a PC. I use it at least a half a dozen times a day, and have no real complaints about it (except maybe the lack of tabbed browsing but that's not a big deal for me). Yet every iPhone user loves to get smug about how they have Safari. Every time I've asked someone for clarification, they either ignore me or they say something to the effect of "oh you wouldn't understand, you don't use an iPhone". So I figure I'll try my luck and ask again.

What makes the iPhone's browser that noteworthy? Is it that great in other ways? Or is this just the users being vocal again?

Re:Outdated?

[jank1887]

I finally enabled web on my LG8350. why? well, I'm still on a data-as-minutes plan with verizon, have a bazillion minutes, and I wanted to do certain things. What things? (1) check my email (GMail), and reply on occasion, (2) check flight status. (3) peek at my weekly ESPN fantasy football matchup if I'm out on Sunday. (4) peek at my google calendar, (5) check the weather, (6) google an answer to a question (usually via wikipedia), (7) keep tabs on my Gameknot chess games.

My phone can't do 3/4 of what IPhone users can do. I have to proxy into some sites (like Facebook) because of certificate limitations, so I generally don't bother. But, the things I want to do can be done. Once I turned it on, I can't seem to stop checking my email inbox. the flight status thing saved me many hours on a few occasions as I was heading to the airport. #7 would be nicer if I could log in and make a move, but the Print Friendly version of the game page lets me at least see things. When my sister came along on vacation with her IPhone, we googled things a little more often, but not much more than I did on my own. I could type faster on my phone than the screen keyboard. My wife still uses hotmail, which has decided to 'upgrade' its mobile version and no longer works quite right on LG 2" screen phones.

I'll never follow an ad on any of those sites. There will be almost no direct monetization of my mobile web traffic. BUT, it's a value-add that may keep me using some service when I'm not on a mobile device. Maybe that's enough value to some people to invest the time and effort.

Re:Outdated?

[Yvan256]

Actually, from what I've read, WebKit (rendering engine) is used by both Safari and Chrome (and I guess Android), but the javascript engine isn't the same.

So, for the (X)HTML and CSS, yes they should be the same. For the javascript, they are not.

Re:Outdated?

[Anonymous Coward]

People love the iPhone's browser because it was the first mobile browser that both rendered well and was easy to use. Opera Mini has done a fine job rendering for years, but you hand that to your aunt and she's gonna futz with it for two seconds before giving up. The iPhone browser, on the other hand, she'll swipe it left and right and realize how neat that is and give it a shot. It's really all about how friendly it feels. I haven't used Iris or Bolt, but I'm guessing they're intended for people like us, not people like them.

Re:Outdated?

[swv3752]

It is mostly the zoom features and the ability to rotate.

That and sites just work like they do with a desktop browser. I recently tried Blackberry (Maybe a Pearl) and it would not display sites right, neither does the Storm. Also tried a touch screen Samsung, and it was not quite right either.

Re:Outdated?

[Dan541]

Not to mention the device is supposed to be a phone.

The iPhone is a fashion accessory marketed towards, well idiots. While their all on facebook the rest of us can enjoy using proper phones.

Re:Outdated?

[silent_artichoke]

Just to make you feel better... I do have an iphone and the web browser isn't all that. If the page has more than a paragraph on it, it gets shrunk down so tiny, you can't read it. You can zoom in, but then you have to scroll back and forth and all over the place to read it. Clicks take a while to register sometimes and I hate that it doesn't save my login information, even though there was an update that was supposed to allow this and there is a button to log in automatically. There is plenty wrong with it. However, I am surprised that I am able to log in to my university's Blackboard system with it.

Re:Outdated?

[sessamoid]

The iPhone is a fashion accessory marketed towards, well idiots. While their all on facebook the rest of us can enjoy using proper phones.

As for the idiots, at least most of their grammar has elevated above a 6th grade level.

Re:Outdated?

[Sancho]

It probably has to do with marketshare, the fact that the iPhone was the first widely used browser to support all of that, and the zooming--dear God, the zooming, which makes most pages downright pleasant to read.

Since the iPhone was released, there have been lots of other manufacturers that put out very capable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing browsers. But there aren't nearly as many people using any single one of them (and possibly all of them combined) as there are iPhone users.

Re:Outdated?

[Sancho]

I wish it wasn't a phone. I'd be perfectly happy with just a 3G data-enabled iPod Touch.

Re:Outdated?

[shutdown -p now]

what about when Youtube switches to H264 only... what about when the next technology after AJAX/CSS/Javascript comes out?

Same as it has always been - you upgrade.

After all, you aren't trying to use YouTube from IE4 either, right?

Re:Outdated?

[bemymonkey]

Sure, but there's nothing to upgrade to right now - top of the line is a Snapdragon based handset or an N900 or *gasp* an iPhone...

It's not the same as with regular computers, where pretty much anything you can buy these days (let's disregard netbooks and nettops for a moment) will pull off 1080p MKV rips and YouTube HD without a hitch... there's just not enough headroom, IMO.

Obviously I'm not going to let that stop me from buying smartphones, but I wish web developers would stop to think about where they're going with their site designs - Slashdot is a prime example... performs extremely badly even on decent hardware (C2D @ 2GHz lags in the dynamic view), provides absolutely no advantages over plain old HTML from the 90s (hell, it even LOOKS like plain old HTML from the 90s!), and most smartphones won't even open it. We need to develop new technologies, sure, but please, show some restraint and only use them for things where they actually make a difference...

Re:Outdated?

[shutdown -p now]

I hear your pain regarding Slashdot - it has truly become a shining example of how not to use Ajax and JS in general on the Web.

As for the rest of it, well... "normal" Web had always been ahead of what mobile could handle for a long time now - it simply wasn't reasonable to dumb down for 170x210 screens and primitive browsers. So, historically, mobile has always been catching up, and it's nothing new. The difference is that now we actually see the light at the end of the tunnel - mobile devices are rapidly getting powerful enough for any random web page to "just work". We aren't quite there yet, but we'll definitely be, and very soon now.

Re:Outdated?

[glennpratt]

Double tap on a paragraph and it will zoom to fit.

AutoFill passwords works fine for me, perhaps you forgot to turn it on (Settings -> Safari -> AutoFill). Do bear in mind, many sites manipulate login forms to prevent saved passwords from working.

Re:Outdated?

[mattack2]

I read slashdot very often on my iPhone. It seems to work well for me. However, I use the classic index (I do on the desktop too). I just turned on "simple design" and "low bandwidth", even for the desktop, and I'll see if I can get used to that. I basically never use the sidebar, which is one of the things one of those prefs changes.

I too generally agree with this subthread -- except of course for Flash pages, the web mostly "just works" on my iPhone, and it sounds like the same is true of the other "full featured" mobile browsers. (I'm not trying to make a tautology by equating "full featured" with "the web just works".. but maybe I effectively am, because those of us with the full featured browsers are sort of stumped by this discussion.)

Heck, most of the time when a web page tries to make me go to a mobile version, I try to go to the regular version ASAP. (Amazon loads !@$ slow, even on a desktop though..)

Re:Outdated?

[silent_artichoke]

I have it turned on, I think it has to do with the fact that the sites I need it for the most have authentication dialog boxes not a website form. Thanks for the double tap tip. I would give you a mod point, but I can't.

Re:Outdated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has a WebKit browser too and the Palm Pre uses WebKit for not just the browser but also the entire OS.

And from what I've seen, all those WebKit browsers can handle a lot of complicated client-side logic. We've tested our application with Android, iPhone and the Pre (not officially, but those are the phones our dev team have) and found that it basically works flawlessly on all of them. There's only a couple of quirky layout problems, but those are minor and have nothing to do with JavaScript and performance is more than acceptable. And our front-end is written in GWT, which means that not only are the interactive pieces handled in JavaScript, but also much of the DOM creation. The HTML for an all GWT page is basically a script tag and a named div to target...everything else gets created dynamically.

The notion that mobile browsers can't handle complex JavaScript is wrong. There may be some badly written JavaScript that doesn't work well, but that's true to some extent on desktop browsers as well. If the JavaScript performance on mobile WebKit browsers isn't on par with the JavaScript performance in IE6, it's pretty damn close. And as every web developer unlucky enough to have IE6 as a required supported browser, JavaScript-heavy web applications can be made to run on IE6 after enough exasperation, web research and random experimentation.

There is, however, one area that developers will need to focus on to improve the mobile user experience. Web applications that make heavy use of JavaScript are often fairly chatty. Whether it's suggest boxes, saving user input in-progress sending individual changes to the server as they're made, there's a tendency on the part of developers to assume that bandwidth is the only concern and if the amount of over-the-wire information sent isn't a lot, it's not a problem. This works great on a desktop connected to a broadband connection. But for mobile devices, where latency is much higher, this can result in an aggravating user experience.

Re:Outdated?

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is listed as a supported codec on the spec sheet. I thought some of multimedia playback in Maemo5 was supposed to utilize the DSP anyway. Adobe is working on releasing flash 10 for ARM next year so that may bring performance enhancements as well.

Re:Outdated?

[uuddlrlrab]

Like the untamed Wild West, where anyone with a gun and a claim could try their fortunes. The problem is most web devs are less Annie Oakley, more Ballad of Irving in terms of skill. They'd be utterly lost without hand-holding stuff like Dreamweaver or fucking FrontPage, or a bazillion other different garbage CMSs that create bloated, ineffecient, bandwidth hogging, junk web "apps" and prevent the user from having to actually, you know, code. Ick. Most would break into a cold sweat if you showed them a sql query, and don't even mention php or perl. Anything in the C family is right out.

Re:Outdated?

[ajlisows]

I may not know what I'm talking about here, so if I am wrong, please correct me. Your really nice high end Mobile Phones may have fully features browsers, but there seems to be a bunch of mid range phones that are like "Smart Phone Lite". They have limited mobile web capability, no SMTP/POP/Exchange EMAIL support, and are a heck of a lot cheaper. I would think that a good deal of users just want to occasionally browse an internet page to checks some news headlines, sports scores, stock quotes, or something else without paying top dollar for a smart phone. Until almost all data enabled phones have full featured browsers, we will have mobile site hell.

Re:Outdated?

[jawahar]

Not really

Re:Outdated?

[bemymonkey]

H264 is supported, but not in Flash Video, as far as I know... Flash-based H264 needs a lot more power to decode on X86 platforms as well.

Re:Outdated?

[TheRaven64]

It's a shame that you posted anonymously and few people can see this. The latency can be a big issue. The AJAX buzzword has asynchronous as the first letter in the acronym, but a lot of people still write more-or-less synchronous code with it. It's also worth noting that mobile users tend to pay more for bandwidth. If you're doing an HTTP request, which can use 1-10KB of data, for every character that they type into a text field then this can very quickly run up their bills or make them hit their limits. It would be nice if sites could designate certain JS features as not vital to the functioning of the site, and have a flag in the client that would avoid running them if the user was paying for bandwidth, or didn't have enough CPU spare for them.

Re:Outdated?

[hkmwbz]

Except Opera has more users than the iPhone browser.. And basically did everything the iPhone browser did before the iPhone was released.

Re:Outdated?

[jc42]

Funny, my experience with the iPhone (which my wife has) is rather different. We keep finding that on most web pages, including pages I've written that are just text with no width=, height=, size=, or any css that forces sizes, either the text is too tiny to read, or when we enlarge it, the "window" becomes much larger than the screen, so we have to scroll around to read it. It's really awful.

OTOH, I have a G1 (Android) phone, and when I use any of its methods to resize things, its browser usually automatically reformats things so that the window is no wider than the screen, and the only scrolling you need to do is vertical. This is a lot easier to read than something that requires 2-dimensional scrolling.

One problem is that on the iPhone, lots of poking around haven't turned up anything that controls font size or anything related. Maybe it's there, but we're both just too dumb to find it. I'd guess that this is a problem for other iPhone users, too, since it's heavily marketed at non-geeks. What we'd like to say is "Make the text a bit larger, and reformat it to fit within the screen's margins." That's what other browsers usually do; it's strange that Safari on the iPhone doesn't. Or maybe we just haven't found the Setting that controls it.

Maybe others don't mind having the screen a tiny window into a much larger page, so you have to constantly scroll left and right to read a single line of text. But I find that very annoying, and a good reason to avoid the iPhone. I am a bit mystified by people who like it. Do they actually use Safari? Or do they just use iPhone apps, and think that those are browsers?

Re:Outdated?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a bunch of mobile versions of wikipedia. Check the links Wikipedia:Mobile access. Some of them are "offline", i.e. work with their own copy of the Wikipedia data, others grab the original pages from wikipedia.org and reformat them in real time. Wikipedia is running their own transcoder service on e.g. en.mobile.wikipedia.org. There's also a number of true offline viewers that allow you to copy the wikipedia data on your handset and run a viewer application from there.

it's all about screen size

[petes_PoV]

... pixels and readability.

No matter how you package it, a text-based website cannot be read conveniently on a postage-stamp sized screen. You spend all your time scrolling the text sideways, and up and down. All this gets in the way of your main aim, which is to get the information on that site. This presumes (falsely) that a usable proportion of the mobile device's screen is not taken up with banner ads, or visual embellishments which simply get in the way. Mobile web is fine for sites that just have a couple of lines of information and maybe a single icon and a link, but for anything more complex you need a screen at least 1024*768 and at a physical size where the letters can actually be read at that resolution.

Since the web is still (and probably will alway be) text based - as this is the best way to achieve a reasonable density of information, mobile users just have to accept that a "massive" 3 inch display just won't hack it. For example, cut a small rectangle out of a piece of paper that covers your whole screen. Now try and do any meaningful work through that hole and you'll have ripped it away within minutes. That's the problem with mobile devices, they're just not big enough to get all the information you need to be displayed at once.

Re:it's all about screen size

[Sockatume]

Surely the rise of web apps demonstrates that most people aren't that interested in actually reading stuff on the web, though. They want to do things on the internet, and the web happens to be a ubiquitous platform for the apps to sit on. Your average Tweet, Facebook pic, or YouTube vid doesn't exactly struggle on even a QVGA display.

As a corollary I wonder whether big-screened e-ink devices are a more natural platform than computers for consuming actual web sites these days. Add a touchscreen and you're not even losing hypertext. I mean, I read blogs and web sites the same way I read books. There's not a huge need for interactivity or multimedia there. The web has a capacity for multimedia content such as in-line videos to demonstrate a point or whatnot, but I find in practice that interesting content and multimedia are usually orthogonal.

Constructing meaningful web content requires a degree of reading capacity beyond mobile devices, and editing capacity beyond e-ink, meaning that traditional computers still have a place, but I think that content creators are rather in the minority.

Re:it's all about screen size

[mcgrew]

but for anything more complex you need a screen at least 1024*768

Funny, back in the nineties my computer screen's resolution was 640x480 and I had no trouble surfing any site on the internet. I never got a sideways scroll.

I've found that for sites that won't display properly, if you go to them via m.google.com Google will reformat the screen so it's useable (or less unusable, depending on the site).

Re:it's all about screen size

[Stevecrox]

There nothing wrong with small screens if the websites properly designed.

For example BBC news website works fine on my Nokia 5800, the frames aren't fixed in width so the whole thing adjusts to properly fit the screen all I have to do is scroll down the page and set the zoom level to something appropriate. Slashdot does something similar where the comments section width never exceeds the available viewing space's width meaning I can scroll across to the comments section and it will fit nicely on the screen.

The problem is to many people don't use CSS/Javascript properly and don't design their pages to properly dynamically adjust. It seems most web designers expect people to be running computers with screen sizes of 1280*1024 and build their site solely to function on that resolution.

Of course the other problem is flashy nonsense that adds nothing. I honestly think a lot of the mobile sites would be better on the PC. Facebook's iPhone page and Dilbert.com/fast would both be great examples.

Re:it's all about screen size

[bertoelcon]

Slashdot does something similar where the comments section width never exceeds the available viewing space's width meaning I can scroll across to the comments section and it will fit nicely on the screen. The problem is to many people don't use CSS/Javascript properly and don't design their pages to properly dynamically adjust.

You must be new here.

Re:it's all about screen size

[Looke]

"Scrolling the text sideways"? It doesn't sound like you ever tried a decent mobile browser, like Opera Mini. It reflows text and resizes images to fit your little 3 inch window. For a whole lot of sites out there, neat and simple tricks like that work brilliantly.

As for the rise of web apps that the article brings up, that's where a mobile browser like Opera Mini falls short.

Re:it's all about screen size

[Eskarel]

FFS, the BBC website cost 30 million pounds to develop and 100 million pounds a year to run of course it runs properly on your bloody mobile phone. Most web developers don't have anywhere near that kind of budget.

Re:it's all about screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

It truly depends on the site. News articles are incredibly easy to read on the iPhone *if the site presents the story as a contiguous block of text*. I suspect that's true on most phones which can show more than 4 or 5 lines of text at a time. Sites like mobile washingtonpost do a great job of this, but even the NYTimes and similar sites without special mobile versions are really easy to use, because they don't break up the text.

For reading, it's sticking ads and buttons and gratuituous graphics (lines, boxes, ...) in the middle of an article which make its display on a mobile device difficult to use.

Clearly sites with lots of interactivity and lots of actions can be a bit difficult to use -- the MS exchange web interface on an iPhone is usable, but not anyone's first choice, mainly since the action buttons are tiny (need to pinch-and-zoom or have very good aim) and at the top of the screen requiring scrolling back (luckily just a single touch) after reading email -- but it's not that hard to design a layout that works for mobile.

Honestly, advertisements are the biggest problem, and sites that (for mobile devices) move the ads to the top + bottom of the text (instead of in the middle) are those which I find myself coming back to on the iPhone. The others are just too annoying.

is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphone?

[alen]

except for the flash based ones, slashdot is the most annoying to navigate on my iphone

Pot, meet kettle

[damn_registrars]

Slashdot is one of the worst for the mobile web. When I try to read slashdot on my blackberry (peal 8120) not only does it not render, it crashes first the browser and ultimately the phone itself. Just simply trying to load slashdot leaves me needing to pull the battery from my blackberry to execute a hard reboot.

Last time I asked, CmdrTaco's response was that slashdot is not concerned about development for mobile devices.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[romiz]

For reading only, there is a lite version. It works on a 128x160 screen, and it's even more selective than browsing at +5.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

too true, makes one wonder, it even sucks on the desktop, and they claim to be tech savvy, what a joke. Wise in their own eyes, typical posers. Also, they probably dont care about mobile because they are chained to their desks wondering why they are not rich off this website, or too cheap to care what others think, emperor has no clothes.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[bazorg]

and that works nicely on my Nokia 3120. thanks for the tip. I'll check if other slash based sites do the same and my toilet time will never be the same!

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[lightningrod220]

Well, it's at an obscure path, rather than being at lite.slashdot.org or slashdot.org/mobile, it's at /palm. What the hell is a palm?

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Tapewolf]

What the hell is a palm?

That PDA-looking thing at the top of the page. (I'm assuming you're being serious). The base resolution was 160x160.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[MobyDisk]

If it crashes your phone, there's something wrong with your phone, not the site.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Anarki2004]

I was about to brag about Opera Mini 5 and how superior it is to other mobile browsers...then i realized how terrible it is for forms. That aside, My Nokia E71 renders slashdot flawlessly.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Phil06]

My iPhone took 20 seconds to load this page over a five bar cell connection. This is excruciatingly slow, almost unusable. The web apps that just serve up web content (wikipedia, news etc) seem slower than their web counterparts when all they are doing is getting content. How can this be that nobody is getting the square zero concept that speed is an essential usability element. (another 30 seconds to load the comment preview)

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[xie.chaos]

For iPhone, please try this: http://tiger.dbs.nus.edu.sg/~xiechao/i/slashdot.pl read only though

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[mcgrew]

Doesn't work on my crappy phone, there's no slash. I wish slashdot would start a mobile.slashdot.org, or better yet folow Googles example and make it m.slashdot.org.

I have found a workaround, however -- going to about any site through m.google.com will render it phone accessible. Not all sites, though; wikipedia simply doesn't work at all on my phone.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[damn_registrars]

If it crashes your phone, there's something wrong with your phone, not the site.

Because clearly, when so many other pages work, and this one particular site causes my phone to crash, the fault is with my phone.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Dan541]

There is a mobile.slashdot.org

and a http://sex.slashdot.org/

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If it crashes your phone, there's something wrong with your phone, not the site.

Because clearly, when so many other pages work, and this one particular site causes my phone to crash, the fault is with my phone.

If a Website, even a maliciously crafted one, can crash your phone, then you have multiple problems with your phone. First your browser or browser plug-in is flawed. Second, your phone's OS is failing to properly handle a crashing program. There might be something wrong with the site as well, but your phone definitely has several things wrong with it.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The website might have a bug that causes it to consume more resources than intended, but the bug in the browser that causes it to crash is much worse. On top of that, a crash can very likely be turned into a security exploit. Not that slashdot would take advantage of it, but J. Random Hacker can make a website that exercises the same browser features than slashdot.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[damn_registrars]

If a Website, even a maliciously crafted one, can crash your phone, then you have multiple problems with your phone.

If you for some reason took my comment to imply that the blackberry is the world's greatest web browsing experience(TM) than we are not communicating well. The blackberry browser has problems, for sure. However slashdot has problems-a-plenty of its own.

When a blackberry attempts to load the slashdot main page, the amount of scripting that the slashdot page sends to the client (in this case my unfortunate blackberry) is simply too much. My phone gets stuck in the infinite loop of shitty code left by some hacktacular programmer and eventually my phone has no resources left with which to save itself. The browser doesn't crash because it believes itself to be waiting for something (which it is). The OS doesn't kill the browser because the browser believes itself to be waiting and not crashing (which is true).

One solution would be to disable javascript anytime I want to read slashdot on my phone; but there are plenty of other sites that write javascript that works correctly and don't crash my phone.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Hillgiant]

What the hell is a palm?

The woefully inadequate successor to the Newton.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Asdanf]

My day job is developing sites for the mobile web, so believe me when I tell you that the Pearl's web browser is a piece of shit. Have you made sure to go into settings and enable css and tables, which are disabled by default? I don't blame any website that doesn't render well on 2+-year-old BlackBerries. They have the worst browsers out there (yes, worse than much cheaper/simpler phones). If you want to browse the web, get a phone with a browser that shows some modicum of standards-compliance.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[dwandy]

My HTC Magic renders /. perfectly - the browser even sticks* and fits** the comments onto the screen-size.
Sounds like it may be time to get a better phone if you're intent on surfing...

*by this I mean that in the nesting of comments I need to move slightly to the right to see the next comment, and as I slide it "sticks" when the comment is fully (width-wise) inside the screen.
**by this I mean that to read a comment I don't ever need to scroll left/right as I'm reading (just up/down) even though the whole page is wider than my screen.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[gorgano]

It's hard to read the posted comments, but the stories themselves are pretty easy to read if you just grab the RSS feed. A lot of websites -- or at least news websites -- provide RSS feeds which can be used as a 'lite' version of the site quite easily.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[shutdown -p now]

Curiously enough, it does read well using Opera Mini. Haven't ever tried to post that way, though.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Mr_Silver]

Slashdot is one of the worst for the mobile web. When I try to read slashdot on my blackberry (peal 8120) not only does it not render, it crashes first the browser and ultimately the phone itself. Just simply trying to load slashdot leaves me needing to pull the battery from my blackberry to execute a hard reboot.

I had this problem with Slashdot over 5 years ago and wrote AvantSlash which turns the pages into something which is readable on just about any mobile device. Please try it if you can.

It kind of saddens me that there are over 50 comments on this article about how poor Slashdot is and yet not one person has mentioned this project. Just goes to show the power of marketing I suppose.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[sootman]

<plug mode="shameless">
I couldn't agree more. Slashdot on mobile devices mostly sucks. I (and others, apparently) have written systems to scrape Slashdot and turn it into something vaguely usable. Here is a really stripped-down version for BlackBerry and here is a slightly spiffier one for iPhone/Pre/Android/etc. Here is a description of what I did, how, why, and source. Only works for the front page but that's enough to get me my "fix" while standing in line at the store. :-)
</plug>

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[Sancho]

Unusable? Man. Did you ever use dial-up?

Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so well

[Paul Carver]

Anything that puts the brakes on flash only websites is a good thing in my opinion. I just wish that there were more users of phones that supported HTML really well but didn't do Javascript so that there would be more pressure on web developers to make their pages accessible.

It seems to be an overwhelming human tendency to put form above function and the only thing preventing web developers from tying everything up in an impenetrable Gordian knot is the ever smaller number of old computers and phones that they might grudgingly spare an occasional though on.

Personally I wish browser plugins had never been invented. I've got a video player, a PDF reader, and all sorts of other applications and my browser knows how to launch them just fine. It annoys me every time some "clever" web developer finds some new way to force my computer to open a PDF inside my browser with restricted controls instead of dispatching it to my PDF reader with full functionality.

When phones catch up fully with modern desktops it may well signal the end of the open, accessible, web. The "professionals" would sure like to make the web just another version of TV where they control everything and our only choice is to use it their way or turn off the set.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[Krneki]

Find a flash block add-on for your web browers. Oh wait, you use an iPhone, nevermind.

why worry: mobile devices get better

[e**(i pi)-1]

There is only one sad thing: that websites force mobile devices to versions which are tailored for mobile devices. Usually, the mobile versions of websites are very limited. Especially, in news sites, one does not find things any more. Worse still is to get automatically redirected to mobile pages which do not work.

The infoworld article mentions scalability as a problem. This could be the crux since it is difficult to maintain different scaled versions at the same time, especially for web applications. So, better keep one, but one which can run nicely on mobile devices i.e. avoid flash if possible.

Mobile devices have got very powerful already. While desktop performance gains have flattened, it is amazing what can be packed into a phone today. This is likely to continue and in the long term, one might not have to worry too much about differences between mobile and desktop any more.

Testing

[Wowsers]

The problem with mobile content is as follows:

1) It's easy to install Firefox / Opera / IE onto a pc, or even another OS, and test your pages using that one machine.
2) Netbooks are same as pc's not too difficult to design / test on.
3) How many mobile phones etc. does a normal person have to test a design? One? two?
4) Mobile devices generally have crappy image quality.

Only the most basic of pages like google's front page looks any good on most phones, there are far more non-iPhones and cloans around.

So WAP design remains pretty much pointless for all but the largest of companies.

Re:Testing

[mcgrew]

Only the most basic of pages like google's front page looks any good on most phones

I don't care what a page LOOKS like, especially on a phone. I want to be able to read the information/article/story etc.

Re:Testing

[tepples]

It's easy to install Firefox / Opera / IE onto a pc, or even another OS, and test your pages using that one machine.

But it's not so easy to test in both Internet Explorer 8 and previous versions of Internet Explorer unless you buy copies of Windows to run in virtual machines, or you buy multiple PCs with Windows and don't keep them updated.

Re:Testing

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe this is what's called "arguing over semantics".

It's Physics, Neil!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the motherboard space and power constraints a mobile device faces relative to a notebook or desktop.

If the mobile device performed on par with a regular PC, then you would have to wonder about the wasted potential of the PC.

And as for the comparison with WAP? How many iPhone, Android, or crackberry users would go back to a WAP-enabled browser circa 1999?

As long as the desktop is pushing the envelope, then by definition the mobile device will be significantly less.

Dumbed down web sites and layered programming

[Viper23]

People who use the web from a cell phone seem to want web pages with maybe two buttons and a text field. Should we really make the rest of our users suffer through dumbed down sucky interfaces in order to only have one development track?

Instead, we make a dumbed down mobile version that allows a user to step wise perform most of the core functions of our app. while leaving a feature rich environment for our PC based users. Since all of it is run from a decently segregated app layer, slapping on a different UI is not that big of a deal... maybe the real problem here is that a lot of development shops don't know how to work in layers.

Re:Dumbed down web sites and layered programming

[Yvan256]

Viper23: apps are like onions.
Donkey: They stink?
Viper23: Yes. No.
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry.
Viper23: No.
Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs.
Viper23: NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Apps have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? They both have layers.
[sighs]
Donkey: Oh, they both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[_LORAX_]

Moron, the iPhone has a built in flash block ( aka, it doesn't support flash ).

The usage is also different

[rannala]

There a definite gap between the experiences, but use cases are usually a bit different, too. Mobile devices are mostly used to check something up quickly on-the-fly as on PC you also do more planning ahead. So a scaled down experience is not necessarily a bad thing on mobile as that eases the pain of having a small screen, slow text input and possibly moving around in a noisy environment. Scaling down the features also forces the development team to focus on the essentials, which is not a bad thing even on PC.

Then again, it would be nice to get Slashdot css working on small screens, too.

Chicken or the egg

[gerryn]

I'd say we are at the point where turning back would be useless, and that cell phones/PDAs should adapt to the desktop worlds web surfing, rather than have its own. Counter-productive as I see it.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Paul... Matlock is on. You should move to the TV room with the others. Today is pepper steak day and we know how much you love pepper steak.

-Nurse Johnson

Equality

[Mr. Underbridge]

It's a good thing that sites like Slashdot work great on all devices though... ...oh, wait...

Hey, slashdot looks like shit on any browser on any device. So it least it's fair. Kind of.

(Posted from a textbox that's twice as wide as my screen).

Mobile Web is the application of last resort.

[maillemaker]

I hate getting on the web with my Blackberry Pearl through T-Mobile. It hearkens me back to the dial-up BBS days it is so slow. I also hate finger typing. I will only use it to get on the web if I am out somewhere and absolutely have to get a phone number or address or some other critical data off of a web site. I don't have the patience for it.

Re:Mobile Web is the application of last resort.

[Xtifr]

I also hate finger typing.

Yes, much better to...type with your nose?

(I'm not fond of most cell-phone keyboards, although I have yet to see one that's worse than trying to type on a touch screen.)

It's the sad state of cellular networks

[Cytlid]

Cell networks, like the old telephone networks were built for voice, not data. They had almost zero foresight in planning. I've mentioned this before. And at least someone is working hard to try and remedy the situation.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[Urza9814]

really? I'm posting from my iPod touch, and I've always found slashdot to be one of the easiest sites to use on this. Hell, it beats most special iPhone mobile versions of sites in my opinion.

Slashdot, meet the Internet

[Rocketship Underpant]

Slashdot doesn't even support Unicode. It's kind of sad that what used to be the Internet's foremost tech site is now a decade behind even the simplest Tumblog with regard to basic Web features and functionality.

Re:Slashdot, meet the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall slashdot having a text based design just up to a few years ago. It wasn't in pace with the web for a long time.
Frankly I liked it better that way. It had an unfriendly feeling towards ordinary /I don't want to fix your pc/ people.

Where is MVC when you need it???

[flajann]

I would've thought that the MVC model would be a shoe-in for site developers looking to support both desktops and mobile devices. Just create a "view" that's tailored for mobile devices. How hard is that to do?

Re:Where is MVC when you need it???

[e2d2]

Not hard at all. What's hard is getting clients to pay for it. In my experience when they do want mobile development they go for the whole package, using a native mobile app targeted at specific devices like the iPhone.

Re:Where is MVC when you need it???

[TwobyTwo]

Where is MVC when you need it???

At the server.

Re:Where is MVC when you need it???

[Yvan256]

It's not hard. It's just that not only are a lot of Web developers lazy, a lot of them use WYSINWYE tools.

Re:Where is MVC when you need it???

[tepples]

Just create a "view" that's tailored for mobile devices. How hard is that to do?

The hard part is testing your mobile view on the plethora of mobile devices, including devices sold in the country where your readers live but not in the country where you live.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[alen]

it's always annoying to try to click a link for the story and it selects the entire thing and just takes you back to the top of the page

Testing is easy - use an emulator

[bigtallmofo]

Blackberry has an emulator for every model they've made that I could see. They are freely available and easy to download and set up.

Visual Studio comes with emulators for every Windows Mobile phone that is out there. I believe you can also freely download them without Visual Studio.

The iPhone has an emulator as well - but you have to be running a Mac. But it's freely available and easy to download.

Nokia? Yeah, they have emulators too.

Not every manufacturer has them of course, but most do.

Re:Testing is easy - use an emulator

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and then you actually see the site on a real handset that you tested for using an emulator, and it comes clear that the emulator shows very different behvaiour to an actual handset.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[cryfreedomlove]

Paul,

Here is one way to apply the breaks. Create a successful website that millions of people use everyday. Do this without using plugins. Your example will inspire other people.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Paul Carver]

Hey Paul... Matlock is on. You should move to the TV room with the others. Today is pepper steak day and we know how much you love pepper steak.

What do you mean by "is on"? I've never seen Matlock in the "Now Showing" list on my Tivo or the "Watch Recordings" list on my Mythtv box so as far as I know it doesn't exist. I haven't watched anything in the last five years that wasn't on one of those two lists.

However, I assume that if the TV producers or stations could stop me from setting the playback speed on Mythtv to 1.1X and hitting the commercial skip button they wouldn't hesitate to do so.

Now if only I could figure out how to send a URL to Mythtv and have it pull shows from websites and display them on the "Watch Recordings" screen with the same playback speed control and commercial skip functions that would be terrific. I suspect it's possible but just more complicated than I have the time to figure out.

To bring this post back on topic, "The Sad State of the Mobile Web" is that it's actually still simple enough that it can be used as the viewer prefers it rather than giving the publisher iron clad control of his/her audience. To me there's nothing sad at all about that. To me the sad state is the non-mobile web where we are seeing more and more websites trying to manage their viewers the way a farmer manages livestock. I don't think there's any doubt that a lot of marketers, advertisers, and MBAs (not mutually exclusive groups) desperately want to channel the entire web browsing audience along a path that they define and control.

Dual track isn't totally bad

[ondigo]

Granted, from a developer's perspective, having to create two versions of a site is a pain. But the reality is, if you want to attract the greatest number of viewers, you need a mobile-friendly site. And from a mobile user's perspective, things are SO much better than they were just a couple of years ago. Many more content providers have created mobile-friendly versions. And though I don't like doing so, I have to give credit to the iPhone for this change. The iPhone and its browser finally got the attention of web developers who had been ignoring the fact that there were MILLIONS of people using WinMo and other OSs to access the web on their phones.

Just buy an iPhone and shutup

[BitZtream]

Here's a trivial idea... Instead of spending you time whining about mobile browsing, the iPhone and AT&T, you could just buy an iPhone and have a nearly perfect mobile browsing experience.

Mobile browsing sucks because manufactures don't really care, just look at how bad it sucks on a Blackberry

Re:Just buy an iPhone and shutup

[Sockatume]

So your solution to people's complaints about the iPhone's web browsing is for them to buy an iPhone? What?

Re:Just buy an iPhone and shutup

[Anonymous Coward]

Phones should do gopher instead. It is the fastest way to present on a small display and let you quickly locate information. A browser or image viewer should be used in cases where you actually need to view the image content.

Re:Just buy an iPhone and shutup

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

Just ... wow.

Where do I start with how wrong you are?

1) "Here's a trivial idea... just buy an iPhone".
          Yes. And for the rest of us who don't live with our rich parents, that's not so trivial.

2) "you could have a nearly perfect mobile browsing experience":
        Ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahahaaahahaaaaaaaa! Sorry, my ass just fell off.

3) "Mobile browsing sucks because manufacturers don't really care"
      You're not really getting the point, son. It sucks because web authors build stupid sites. Pay attention.

4) "just look at how bad it sucks on a Blackberry"
        Just as bad as it does on an iPhone.

5) An ellipse shouldn't be used to replace a comma and commas shouldn't be used to replace either a full stop or a semicolon.

Re:Just buy an iPhone and shutup

[Concerned Onlooker]

"1) "Here's a trivial idea... just buy an iPhone".
                    Yes. And for the rest of us who don't live with our rich parents, that's not so trivial."

Get lost. The iPhone now goes for $199. How much do you spend gaming? How much did you pay for your last laptop or computer? I'll bet you spend that much on Cheetos in a year. I see that Sprint is offering the Blackberry Tour 9630 for $150. That's after a $100 rebate.

The iPhone is perfectly affordable for someone who decides he wants one. No need to live with rich parents. Unless you want to buy an HTC (http://www.nextag.com/htc-phones/search-html)

2) "you could have a nearly perfect mobile browsing experience":
                Ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahahaaahahaaaaaaaa! Sorry, my ass just fell off.

No really, it's a terrific browsing experience for a mobile device. I remember my Treo web browser and I would never want to go back to that.

3) "Mobile browsing sucks because manufacturers don't really care"
            You're not really getting the point, son. It sucks because web authors build stupid sites. Pay attention.

You're half right.

4) "just look at how bad it sucks on a Blackberry"
                Just as bad as it does on an iPhone.

I haven't seen a browser on a Blackberry, but I can definitively tell you that Safari on the iPhone works really, really well.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Sure, colonslash is somewhat usable on an iPhone, but considering it's basically loading text comments (sure, there are lots of them, but still...), it is an absolute slug. And lets not even bring up the aborted fetus that is the "mobile" version. I think it was originally made in 2000 or 2001 and has never been thought about again. For an idea of how a usable message board/comment system can be done well for mobile devices, look no further than a site like Slick Deals, or really, any of the other numerous sites out there that took a weekend or two to sit down and think about how to accomplish this Herculean task.

Too Late!

[qazwart]

The iPhone has pretty much killed the Mobile Web Page. The WAP protocol is dead. Other phones are beginning to support full page web browsing. By the end of next year, even Windows Mobile phones will have the full sized IE8 browser embedded in them. Many sites are even optimizing their webpages for the small screen mobile devices. Some have switched to narrow columns on their pages which allow users to quickly zoom in on the column and read an article. Some have specialized websites that are "mobile friendly". The best ones use CSS to determine whether or not you're a phone, and then display their website in an optimized fashion. (Take a look at Google's various sites or weather.com).

The mobile web is finally taking off because someone finally realized that you need a device that makes surfing the web practical and get a few million people to use it. Once sites realize that people are using their phones to browse them, these sites make phone optimized pages.

The only dark side to the mobile web are specialized phone apps. There are too many websites, that instead of creating mobile-friendly versions of their site, create a specialized iPhone app. This unfortunately takes pressure off the company to produce a truly mobile app. Flightaware.com is an excellent example of this. Their website is hard to maneuver around on an iPhone, so they made an app (which has fewer features) instead of improving their website.

Re:Too Late!

[shutdown -p now]

iPhone was the final nail in the coffin, but it started much earlier than that - full-featured browsers on mobile devices aren't new (think Opera Mobile, which is still very popular). The only thing that iPhone brought to the picture is a mobile browser that is not only full-featured, but that also has a convenient UI for this form factor.

Lack of Unicode in /. is on purpose (5:erocS)

[tepples]

Slashdot doesn't even support Unicode.

This is on purpose because people were abusing bidirectional characters to distort the layout and forge comment scores.

There are many problems w/MCallisters article

[TwobyTwo]

This is an important debate, but Neil McAllister's article suffers from a number of problems. For example, it references the recently popular Webkit Comparison Table along with Peter-Paul Koch's claim that there is no “WebKit on Mobile”. The article didn't point out that some people like Alex Russel have dug deeper and have found that the facts don't support PPK's conclusions as strongly as one might think. Yes, if you include lots of older devices, there's quite a divergence in Webkit deployments, but what PPK and Neil McAllister don't say is that compatibility is much better on devices that ship recent versions, it's especially good for core features, and it's improving all the time.

McAllister also implies that the mobile Web is in trouble because "On my BlackBerry, JavaScript performance is abysmal". Using that argument, I can prove that Windows will never be successful, because I could in the early days show you PC's that ran it with abysmal performance. The potential of technologies like Javascript needs to be evaluated using the best implementation you can find; that shows what's possible. He does go on to say: "And even when a handset vendor does improve JavaScript performance, as Apple did with iPhone OS 3.0, it's a relative increase." Aren't they all? "You're still dealing with a poky handheld processor (and in Apple's case, one that developers speculate is too feeble for Flash or Java)." Uh, so now the reason that the HTML and Javascript will fail is that ARM processors are too slow to run Java? What's the connection I'm missing? The fact is, that there are some pretty good AJAX sites for mobile, so we know the ARM processors are good enough to run that Javascript. Try, for example, going to http://www.gmail.com using Safari on your iPhone. Not a usable experience? Even works offline using HTML 5 local storage (not Gears). Also, even if Javascript performance were somehow related to Java performance, I bet the Android folks would like to hear that Java doesn't run right on ARM processors, since the entire upper level infrastructure of Android, including user applications, is built on just that combination (as optimized using the Dalvik VM).

Unfortunately, articles like this can do real damage. Many people who are not expert in these things are struggling to figure out which mobile application development models are going to be workable. I happen to believe that the Mobile Web will, like the desktop embodiment of the Web, grow as disruptive technologies tend to: from something that's a bit shaky at first to the model that dominates? Why? Because unlike Mr. McAllister, I believe that the underlying processors and system technologies are capable of running it, and the value of a model that is fully cross-platform, can support zero install operation (you might want to install a mapping application to find a restaurant, but you almost surely don't want to install the restaurant's application to read menus or get discount coupons), can also scale to support installable applications (Widgets) and offline operation, is compelling. Furthermore, as has been the case for years, the Web has the unique value of allowing you to link to the over 1 trillion Web pages, without jumping out from some proprietary application container to a Web browser. Whether I'm right about the likely success of the mobile Web or not, this whole question deserves a much more careful analysis than McAllister's article provides. Unfortunately, there will be many people who read it and jump to the conclusion that the mobile Web is failing. A shame.

Re:There are many problems w/MCallisters article

[Anonymous Coward]

McAllister has a series of gripes and strings them together to the wrong conclusion. If you want the Web to work on any device, the most important thing is standards compliance.

Don't come whining to me about how Flash, Native Client, Gears, or someone else's great idea of fragmenting the web is great and a necessary part of your Web experience. A good chunk of the Web as we know it won't run on desktop PCs because the user isn't using Windows or IE, so don't even start on different platforms and architectures.

If you want your websites to work on modern mobile phones, all you need to do is follow the W3C specs. Webkit is the dominant mobile browsing engine and will work with standards. That is the minimum requirement for mobile. If you want to make the mobile Web experience more enjoyable, then design as you would for accessibility and just general usability. There is nothing else to it. Modern mobile browsers will take care of the rest.

Why WAP is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a little reminder: every page you visit with in WAP automatically gets your billing details.

There have been some scams abusing this "feature".

Working with Concrete?

[Serious Callers Only]

And because of that nearly all of the tools available exclude the mobile web.

I don't know, some open source frameworks do have support for mobile websites built in - you can just customise a few layouts on Rails for example (as in 1 or 2 layouts), or just change the CSS if you like and you can add mobile support pretty easily. I've done it on a few sites and it wasn't difficult.

I understand some of the larger CMS frameworks will make this difficult, but then they make most stuff difficult if it wasn't originally considered when they wrote the framework - that's the compromise you make as you get a lot of stuff for free with them, but adapting them is more difficult and liable to break stuff. So it's a trade-off. That said it might be worth stepping outside your comfort zone and evaluating a few other tools as mobile websites start to be requested more and more. They're not going to go away, and you may find that clients start demanding sites that can be adapted for both. I think Drupal has decent support too.

So not all open source solutions ignore the mobile web completely or make it difficult - with some it's really quite simple. Avoid flash, make sure javascript degrades, and simplify layouts.

Convergence

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally wrong; the way mobiles interact with the web is converging with the traditional desktops; there won't be a need for two separate tracks of development except from a pure usability perspective (which has nothing to do with standards or client side technologies). Sure, you can argue that things should be cleaner and tidier (less javascript, flash, whatever) but the driver for that should not be to adapt to a specific set of viewing devices (which will likely change anyways over time)

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Eskarel]

That's just great, if all you want from the web is static text. That isn't however, what the vast majority of people and companies want.

AJAX exists because when Microsoft put it into hotmail it was so vastly successful that it actually got implemented as a standard.

The web is about the delivery of information. That is it's function. Believe it or not, for most people, the form in which information is delivered is very important. You cannot separate form from function on the web. It just doesn't work. If you could there wouldn't even have been any HTML, just straight text coming down a pipe.

I personally don't really like some things opening in my web browser either, but I've had clients who insisted that it be done that way. I hate convergence devices too, but everyone still has an iPhone, because that's what they actually want.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Z8]

Here's a popular one that works without javascript or plugins.

browser

[zogger]

Did you jump through the hoops and put the opera mini browser on it? I know the guys at the howard forums recommend that over the stock browser that comes with that phone.

Re:browser

[mcgrew]

Thanks, I didn't know it was possible. I'll have to do a little research. And yes, that OpenWave browser is pure shit.

Eternal September

[Dan541]

Last time I asked, CmdrTaco's response was that slashdot is not concerned about development for mobile devices.

Lets just hope it stays that way to spare us Eternal September.

Seriously if you thought AOL users were bad, they are nothing compared to iPhone users.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[Krneki]

Sorry for my ignorance, but I never had or will use an apple product.

open ebook and open reader

[steak]

If the wikireader can be hacked to support this, I'm sold. I believe that if the prices of readers can be cut down to less than one hundred dollars they will become much more popular.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Anonymous Coward]

Form often is more important than function, if it's a nice website that works great for 95% of browsers, vs an ugly one that works for 97%. Let's face it, everyone uses javascript and almost everyone has flash.

If your browser doesn't render like IE, Safari or Firefox, you loose.

the "mobile" web

[Anonymous Coward]

yawn. it aint going anywhere.

Not so bad

[dn15]

I know mobile browsing has traditionally been a pain, but outside of work I actually do more browsing and emailing from my iPhone than from my personal computer.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[salesgeek]

AJAX exists because when Microsoft put it into hotmail it was so vastly successful that it actually got implemented as a standard.

AJAX has always been a hack - powerful, useful, but at the end of the day, it's taken the web a long way from being just a nice and simple way to browse hypertext. What drove AJAX was *not* developer tools or websites, but rather the rapid replacement of dial up with broadband connections. Ajax works great on broadband. It sucks on dial up. There's a reason why AJAX interfaces still have a "classic interface so users with slow connections can use them. Mobile broadband just doesn't work like a cable modem or T-1 - it's laggy, speeds change wildly and disconnects and reconnects are constant at irregular intervals.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[cerberusss]

except for the flash based ones, slashdot is the most annoying to navigate on my iphone

Just create a separate account, then log into that account and do:

• Click on Help & Account (upper right)
• At the right, below 'Classic Index', click General
• Check 'Use classic index'
• Check 'Simple design'

Then go to your iphone and log in with the new account. Simple as that.

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[Anonymous Coward]

No, /. sucks because slashcode is a festering pile of shit that (somewhat ironically, for a supposed geek site) gets WORSE and more bloated with every single release. I have trouble browsing it with desktop browsers sometimes.

here ya go

[zogger]

Boost mobile discussion

Howardforums are the best for various cellphone discussion, tons of subgroups there

Re:here ya go

[mcgrew]

Thanks for that

Wah...Wah...

[akabigbro]

Stupid web developers don't even know how to use their tools and so they blame everyone else. This is why CSS was created. END OF STORY.

Telephones are not very good for viewing the web

[Anonymous Coward]

much the same way that my car does not make very good toast.

duh...

This is true, just look at slashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a blackberry storm, and the mobile web world is pretty bad on it.

If you try to view slashdot.org, all the scripts load and slow things down to a major crawl on the device. Half the websites won't work with it's browser, unless you tell it to say it's Firefox or IE instead of Blackberry.

If you go to the WAP version of slashdot.org, it's not even remotely the same. 5 stories linked to via a list. Very plain, and looking like it's ment for a mobile phone without any real capabilities.

The issue is, most sites that allow you to view the "full version" are sending you the FULL version of the site. Javascript and all, which is fine when the device can do it (such as the Storm), but with the low CPU power and memory, things become slow and unusable in no time.

another good link

[zogger]

direct download for apps on boost phones, less hoop jumping

http://boostapps.com/

I'm not sure but I still think you need the (appropriate) usb cable to do tethering to your regular computer (although I think the TOS sort of frown on that, I know it is possible) though, not sure on bluetooth yet. Most likely I am gong with these guys when I upgrade next, just to have a backup cheap ISP. I use either prepaid tracphone or net10 now (have both here), and it's the same ten cents a minute, or you get boost all you can eat everything for 50 bucks, or just the data is 35 cents a day, then ten cents a minute talk, which I will probably go for, because I just don't talk that much on the phone anymore so I really don't need even the 50 buck plan. 11 bucks a month for a backup ISP is quite the deal, even if it is a slow network. I also like that they are iden, same as the electric power guys, so when the grid goes down, that will most likely be still up no matter what in my area, it is their emergency commo service, they even have emergency mobile towers and everything. Plus the walkie talkie feature is another cool deal. Probably get a sprint/nextel iden network styled blackberry (used), then activate it with a boost activation Sim card, etc. I've been researching this for awhile now, seems the combination of the cheapest and best for all the various mobile everything you might want. Just waiting for the "spare" FRNs to show up 0_o

not so sad if you don't want a desktop experience

[recharged95]

TFA misses the point, the mobile device is all about simplicity and fast, intuitive access.
Unless I missed the trend that everyone wants to see the same thing on their 3.1" screen like on their 21" LCD at home?
WAP was a great idea, poorly executed and the web grew so fast it couldn't scale. All mobile platforms face this challenge, cause just a simple translation of the desktop is just plain stupid. It's a problem we need. And in the end, it's not a sad situation as a finding a mobile solution will guarantee that the desktop experience will get better from it current state of Flash induced indigestion and inefficiency.

Design like it's 1999....

[ducomputergeek]

Seriously, that's what we did when creating our mobile ordering platform. Everything is in HTML with vanilla javascript for things like form validation. Then we created a mobile style sheet without graphics, other than a thumbnail of the logo, and it works on every mobile browser we've tried. iPhone, Blackberrys, Samsungs, Windows Mobile, Pre, various LG phones we've tried. Everything. Even over GPRS/Edge the pages load snappy.

Devices and web

[Anonymous Coward]

If only the mobile phone producers could agree on some kind of a web standard for the bloody phones. Currently almost every single device model has it's own (almost unique) hacked version of either Mozilla or Safari. It would be all nice and good, but to make those browsers render something at a reasonable speed things are stripped out from the rendering engines and that causes a whole lot of problems. Even if it's a CSS only site, no JS or Flash (actually, forget about Flash in sites for the regular mobile, never mind if you're a masochist), the rendering across the devices is noting short of random. If one device will show the page correctly, then a different device in the same category but from a different manufacturer ("same" browser) might only display gibberish.
I've worked with this stuff for a good number of years now and even with the latest and greatest devices there are problems. I can only hope that the devices will become powerful enough to support a full-blown browser without killing the poor phone.

Re:I have a better idea than yours

[uuddlrlrab]

Couldn't have said it better myself, Hal. I've only dabbled in making web pages, javascript, css & xhtml, but in just about every 'Intro to html/js/web dev' book I've seen, these sorts of fallbacks are discussed. First and best thing is to find out their user-agent, find out what features are available, NOSCRIPT to account for when js is off or simply not available. I really have to wonder just how much actual "web development" that spazoid from a few posts back actually does.

To him: There're a few little hiccups, one of which is providing for your customers' needs. Do you really think they'll be happy with you if, after they say, "Hey, some of our employees will need to be able to access this stuff on the road from their mobiles," you give them that nice little diatribe? And how about the more basic issue of just making your site robust, and setup so having the "wrong" browsers won't just break it utterly break it. You're not calling the shots: the client and their customers are. Welcome to the real world.

Skyfire

[planckscale]

This is why I love the Skyfire browser on my Windows Media 6.1 HTC Kaiser (Tilt). Skyfire looks to me like they stream the browser which is actually running on a server somewhere and then forwards input from my device into the browser. It has great zooming capabilities, can play flash movies etc from most sites and is very fast. In this way, the browser is always at the latest version and is a full-fledged fat-client browser.

Re:Skyfire

[hkmwbz]

Basically like Opera Mini, then. Except Skyfire doesn't have a working business model :D

Re:is this why /. is the sucks to read on my iphon

[madcow_ucsb]

Seriously. Even on my Mac, all that does is highlight the story for no apparent reason. Why on earth is that region clickable, anyway? It makes it damn near impossible to hit the REAL links in the middle of the giant one.

Poor Article

[julianc]

The problem I have with the article is that it is pretty easy to get misled by what's being said, probably because the author wrote the article more to generate a reaction, than to outline what is actually wrong with the mobile web.

The first mistake that the author makes is to suggest that the mobile web is somehow a 'scaling out' of the desktop web. It isn't. A mobile phone has a particular set of properties which make it significantly different to a desktop browser web experience. It's not just a smaller screen that's attempting to present exactly the same web application as the desktop but in miniature. May people fail to make this distinction, and their web sites/mobile apps reflect that failure.

If you think this, then you fall into the trap of not recognising the mobile as a unique type of device. For one thing users don't want to spend extended periods browsing on a mobile device, supported technologies are not likely to support 'desktop' level performance, mainly because of the trade-off between battery life and performance. With the current range of mobile devices, the network connections aren't reliable, unless you're fortunate enough to always have a wifi connection. There will always be memory and performance constraints with mobiles, at least for the foreseeable future verse the desktop, thats just the nature of the beast.

If you know anything about web browser evolution, you'll know that even when just two browsers had most of the market share, serious compatibility issues were everywhere, built for IE, built for Firefox, best experienced in Opera. These days its not as bad for desktop browsers, but it'll take a while for mobile browsers to get compatible with other mobile browsers, let alone desktop browsers as well.

Can existing web technologies handle it, ... probably if you're a CSS black belt, anything else apart from plain html and your really gonna struggle.

So, back to the original 'sad state of the mobile web' bit. Does it matter that much at the moment? Probably not. The main options you have are use your desktop browser if a task takes more than a few minutes to complete, or 'there's an app for that' - you just have to find it.

Strange as it may seem, mobile phones aren't just about mobile web. They're about the convergence of a number of technologies, internet connectivity, phone, sms, music, camera, video, GPS/location, touch and interaction on the move. There's whole new vistas of opportunity for creating new experiences, tools, and services because of what you can now carry around with you in your pocket.

Sure, you can spend your time worrying about how you're gonna squeeze Amazon.com into the latest version of webkit for the Nokia, or you can spend your time creating solutions you could only have dreamed of a few years back. The mobile web may indeed be sad, but some of us are not that bothered.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Anonymous Coward]

AJAX exists because when Microsoft put it into hotmail it was so vastly successful that it actually got implemented as a standard.

what the fuck? rewriting history are we? as i remember it gmail's use of ajax that inspired MS to make hotmail slightly less shitty, many months later of course.

another link

[zogger]

should you ever want to upgrade hardware, check this stuff out (third party modded) for boost

http://boostberry.com/

I am really thinking now after finding this site of upgrading my cheapie phone to one of these guys here, proly that least expensive refurb model.

Re:another link

[mcgrew]

Holy crap, there's only one model that costs more than mine. I paid $106 plus tax for a Motorola i776 at Best Buy, the only place in town to get phones for a Boost.

Of course, it fits in my pocket, I'm not sure a crackberry would.

No, The wap wasn't the same as your iphone

[Mr_Mirsal]

Try surfing the web using an android / maemo / moblin device, or an iphone and you'll see that the mobile web is in pretty good shape actually.

Let's keep it simple, eh?

[bryonschultz]

Seriously, don't most, if not all of us go to the web for information, not pretty and fancy pages? Interactivity is one thing, but let's keep it simple.

Why....yes!

[maillemaker]

But by far my favorite is butt-cheek typing.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Eskarel]

I double checked, and corrected my mistake.

I'm correct that, the original implementation of XMLHttpRequest was Microsoft's god awful ActiveX one way back in 2000Before google was doing anything at all with mail, but it was for their web enabled version of outlook, not hotmail.

Re:Wish the iPhone didn't support Javascript so we

[Eskarel]

Lord knows AJAX is a horrible hack.

That said, having coded quite a lot of it, your network speed doesn't really make any difference. Unless you're using it to request totally superfluous information the visitor doesn't need requesting that information via an XMLHttpRequest or through a regular page reload makes no real difference. You could even argue that if the load is going to take an especially long time then allowing the rest of the page to remain is actually more beneficial. The reason for most classic interfaces is that the new AJAX ones tend to be a lot prettier(in addition to being more responsive) and that prettiness uses extra bandwidth. Rather than build two AJAX interfaces one high bandwidth, one low, most places just kept their classic interface. That increase in prettiness has certainly been driven by broadband,but it's been driven on every kind of site not just AJAX ones.

Computer speed(especially if you're using older IE versions) has a lot more impact on javascript performance(and then of course AJAX) than network speed does. That's actually one of the motivators for using all this javascript in the first place(at least in some of my work).

Most computers these days, especially in corporate environments are ridiculously over specced. A lot of the time the vast majority of their CPU time is sitting idle. In these days of tighter budgets however, most servers are not. If I can palm some of the layout work off onto the over specced desktops, then that's work my server(which never gets the love from finance it deserves) doesn't have to do.

Web pages don't have to look like games!

[Anonymous Coward]

I use babelserver.org on my mobile. If a site doesn't go through there, it isn't worth reading.

C'mon call the games games, and stop using flash in every other web page!