A plea from the wireless Internet
October 5th, 2009
Posted by: Theo NicolakisPlease, let’s get it right with mobile Internet. Wireless Internet access from mobile devices reached the watershed moment with the iPhone over two plus years ago when the iPhone was first launched.
Now with the third generation iPhone (3 Gs) out we can’t say we are caught by surprise. As a power iPhone user, nothing irritates or frustrates me more than being treated like a blackberry or “other” mobile device.
Some sites provide a mobile version for the iPhone that is so handicapped so as to render it virtually unusable. NyPost is one such site that I dread to visit. The iPhone version is nothing more than the version given to Blackberry users. It is rudimentary, has no search feature, and worst of all you cannot get out of that version. The web site is configured to recognize the iPhone’s Safari browser and serve up a lower-end version.
ESPN on the other hand gives you an iPhone specific view of it’s site that conforms to some of the overall navigational styles Apple introduced in the iPhone. It’s just OK but not my favorite If that site confuses or annoys, you can at lease click on a link to view the “real” web site. I love that.
I stand accused here because neither the www.goarch.org or www.patriarchate.org and www.usvisit2009.org web sites have a mobile version. That’s more an issue of staffing challenges and time to create the templates in our CMS than bad implementation.
So I just ask one simple thing: we are in the mobile/portable information age. It’s not coming. It’s here. Can we please create sites that don’t treat mobile users like second class citizens and have CMS developers consider push-button mobile renditions of sites so that tomorrow’s majority–mobile internet users– aren’t treated like second class citizens today.
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