After reading many articles on the trends for 2009 there seemed to be an overwhelming lean towards the mobile web. The iPod has certainly given the mobile web a virtual kick up the bum, and I believe it is a good thing. I don’t own an iPod, so I am not being bias when I say that the iPod is helping to change the way we access the Internet to get information. Many other phone manufacturers such as HTC and Nokia are also part of the explosion of mobile browsing but what does it mean to us as bloggers?
To a blogger this can mean the thought of having to change or update their web site to cater for the new media but this is not necessarily the case. Some of you already know of the plugins for WordPress that can turn your site into a mobile friendly site, such as WordPress Mobile Edition. There are also sites that are offering to convert your site into a mobile friendly version for free as part of a service but do we need to?
The Debate
I have debated this a lot recently and I’m sure to make a few eyebrows raise when I say that in my opinion I don’t think we have to necessarily create a mobile friendly version of our websites, as long as the full web version is functional on a mobile phone you should be fine, of course using a simple plugin that take ten minutes to install is always worth doing but I believe we are seeing the end of the mobile web and the beginnings of the mobile Internet.
There was a big influx to get a mobile friendly web site up and running especially when the .mobi domain names were released but how many .mobi sites have you visited recently? Personally I don’t think I’ve visited one since they have been available. The big corporations raced to get their mobile version up and running like the BBC but I’m not a big fan, the BBC mobile web site has nothing on it. Although recently they have updated it to include video and some other more Interesting content. Personally I feel limited when using it, plus as an everyday user of a computer browser, I know where everything is on the website but on the mobile version it can be hard to find some things. Thankfully I eventually figured out how to stop it going to the the mobile version automatically. I can’t imagine changing this back.
When using a mobile phone to browse the Internet most websites just let you view the normal site as though you were using a computer. The mobile browsers can cope with most things that the web throws at them apart from a few bits of JavaScript and Flash. I’ve not seen any problems with loading or any readability issues with viewing normal websites but this will of course depend on the sites you visit. Take Facebook for example, this must be one of the most visited sites on a mobile phone along with Twitter but how many of you actually visit the website and how many use an app to view the content?
The iPod has really got the creative juices flowing and the amount of apps you can get is incredible but it is not just on the iPhone that this is happening. Windows Mobile is getting better and Nokia is gathering speed at a lightning pace with their mobile widgets.
What is a mobile widget?
A mobile widget is what I believe is going to be the future (the next generation) of the mobile Internet, they are simple web apps that are built with open web technology like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you can even use JQuery. On a WordPress blog? Then you can could use the feed from your site and show it in your mobile widget. If you already have some web skills using HTML, CSS etc as above then you can build a mobile widget. Right now they are only for the Nokia platform but that already has over 1 million users and the idea for the future is to build a mobile standard that will then allow for these to be cross platform. The best thing about a mobile widget is that you don’t have to worry about the size of your widget, the widget will fit nicely in any mobile phone screen.
I have only briefly introduced you to mobile widgets but have a look at this tutorial from Think Vitamin and you can see how easy it is to create a widget. You can then decide whether or not you should consider building one for your own site, for your users to download and start viewing your content on a mobile phone. Be the first to offer a widget from your site and gain new visitors.
Have fun and if you create a widget make sure you let us know in the forums.
Thank you for the nice post, I am using the Nokia 5800, and I am happy with it.. the good thing is that I don't have to carry my laptop everywhere I go!
I am glad you like it
The Nokia 5800 is a very nice phone, have you got any widgets for it?
The benefit of being able to get your emails check you tweets etc from anywhere is such a good thing.
I think (well strongly believe) that the growth of mobile web, and associated technology and a correlation with the growth of .mobi domain extension. .mobi may not be adhering to device independence, but the technology, such as Instant Mobilizer, can really take the growth of this domain forward.
I think whole trend to say that special mobile version is needed is overkill (for now). Especially since such plugins can easily introduce caching and other issues, I had seen blogs stuck with giving mobile version of some pages to regular browser.
Much easier in my opinion is one of following:
– provide filtered version of site without heavy parts (images, scripts), plenty of services can do this I like (and will probably use as mobile option in new theme) Finch most;
– provide RSS feed formatted for mobile device. Plenty enough to read latest posts and that is exactly what mobile browsing is mostly used for (not counting search).
Yes the mobile internet is next generation.I was using mobile internet before I switched to broadband
Regards
Salman
http://www.tips4blogging.co.cc
@richael and @Rarst The .mobi domain will eventually become more wide spread but at the moment it was just a fad and not many are going for it. Many as Rarst says create a simple version of their site and put it onto a sub domain then according to the size of the screen they redirect them to the mobile version.
The standard that they are creating isn't about the actual apps but a platform to build to like the w3c standard where everyone is on the same page. There is one goal for everyone to build for everything so no one misses out
Lee, I read this article and the comments above and wanted to let you guys know that if you want to find out if a visitor to your website is using a handset, you don't do it by detecting the screen size. You use the HTTP_USER_AGENT server variable as each handset will give a different agent (browser/platform) name, such as an iPhone which returns AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko.
Then you redirect the user to the correct page.
Thanks Cliff i totally forgot about that although there was some problem with this at first but i am sure they must be fixed now.
Lee Said, "I believe we are seeing the end of the mobile web and the beginnings of the mobile Internet"
Like Lee, I also do not own an iPod Touch or iPhone. But after using the Safari mobile browser for a few minutes it doesn't take long to recognise that we, the consumer, finally have access to a generation of devices that can actually browse the internet. Properly.
I do concede an important portion of the internet is hidden away from many mobile devices (like the iPhone) in flash, but we can't be more than a hardware generation or even software update away.
Thanks for the great article.
Thanks for your comment
Browsing will get better and better and more and more apps will be made to make life easier getting to the content we want.
I am hoping that Flash will be developed shortly to be able to be used on a mobile phone more readily.
Our world becomes smaller and smaller. That's it.
Btw, I really hope any improvement or changes will lead to the better world. I love reading nice information on the Internet everyday so I hope I could do the same for the rest of my life =)