21 "Optimized for XXX"

iPhone is the new Internet Explorer 4…

Please, whenever you hack your website for iPhone, keep in mind that it’s not the only mobile browser in the world. It’s not even the only WebKit-based nor Acid2-compliant mobile browser (S60, Opera Mobile).

posted at 12:29 pm on August 29, 2007 by bugmenot bugmenot

22 iPhoney

It’s nice to see that there’s such wide support for the iPhone (albeit from iPod users), and as much as I agree with Craig that the mobile internet ‘revolution’ is inevitably going to grow in both coverage and usage (more so when internet speeds and g3 actually get up to speed).

But although Craig doesn’t advocate the creation of an iPhone specific site, and in fact only offers it as an option, it’s plain as day that Apple would love us all to create an alternative site for their format.
Their creation of a huge knowledge base of supported micro-formats and new methods, and their ignorance in ditching flash in favour of yet another naff Quicktime format (that unfortunately gained more weighting when Youtube decided to start converting all it’s videos to follow the trend); shows to me that Apple, like Microsoft in past year, prefer to write the standards and rules that we all must follow rather then making use of well established technologies and techniques.

Jesus even media temple jumped on the bandwagon (granted their time could be better spent solving other issues), but it does show that more and more “trend” following companies are jumping to kick their developers into creating new sites and systems implementing Apples new obscure, phone specific CSS.
I’m very much with Joe’s observation in that they should have taken a more industry standard approach and implemented the hand-held media type as its base.

In the end though I expect if sales are big enough (which with all the iPod fan boys out there they will be), and mobile networks finally get their 3G up to speed; we’ll all find ourselves developing iPhone friendly sites to please a directors whim (who will of no doubt got the idea off their 11 year old kid).

Lets hope Nokia doesn’t release a contender and its own set of CSS rules, then Sony, then Motorola.
If they wanted a new standard it should have gone through the W3C, granted they may not have been able to make the product for 8 years while they argue over semantics but the standard would have been recognised.

Anyway, I’m ranting, back to work.

posted at 12:44 pm on August 29, 2007 by Chris McKee

23 Craig, don't get me wrong.

I should have been a little less curt in my comment. I liked the article and thought the reasoning in it illustrates well the challenge we face in designing for the mobile web, and I’d like to stress the word design. I guess that was the point I was trying to make, that my primary focus is structure with design being secondary.

As you demonstrated in the article, design solutions for the iPhone (and the rest of the mobile web) should be left to CSS. But I will never change the structure of the information based on what type of client is reading it; proper structure is the path to functionality, navigability, and ultimately usability.

Is it possible to detect the iPhone on the server using user-agent?

posted at 03:18 pm on August 29, 2007 by Mike Sabatino

28 Keep things in perspective

Please do remember that in a global scale, iPhone is in a niche — and will stay there for a long time.

Nokia, for example, is shipping more than 1.1 million phones a day (see here ), so they’ll sell more phones in nine days than Apple during the rest of the year. Further, 1.1 million is number of real shipments, not predictions.

N95 has sold more than iPhone and it is a quite capable phone, but I haven’t seen any tips and tricks to made sites just for it. Maybe ALA would pick the topic?

posted at 06:01 am on August 30, 2007 by Janne Kalliola

29 Great Resource

Thanks for the info! As an iPhone lover (I never leave home or the office without it) and someone concerned with making sure my websites are as mobile friendly as possible, I will use this info and will encourages my own readers to read your article.

I’m looking forward to installment #2.

posted at 12:18 pm on August 30, 2007 by Angela Parker

30 The iPhone Is Not The Only Mobile Web Device

I’m shocked that ALA has allowed an article to be published that goes against it’s prior preaching of code once for all browsers and devices. Device specific design seems like a trip back to the dark ages when everyone “optimized” their site for a specific browser.

Yes, the iPhone is neat and shiny but what about the 650 million other mobile-web devices out there? The iPhone only accounts for 0.046% of mobile devices.

Here is a graphic that will help put things into perspective -> http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/the-iphone-is-not-the-only-mobile-web-device/

posted at 04:57 am on August 31, 2007 by Russell Heimlich

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