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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.