A little more on mobile Websites

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There’s been a bit more discussion of my post about sites that don’t work well on mobile phones (here’s a good roundup of posts on the Windows Mobile News site). A lot of people assumed I was asking for Web designers to do a special site just for mobile phones. I was not.

See, there are a few simple things you can do to make your site work properly on a mobile phone. Like what? The biggest mistake I see most bloggers do is put their navigation div on top of their content div. Nasty cause that forces small screens to scroll down. One one site I visited tonight that took 43 seconds. I won’t embarrass that guy. I’ll film a video instead to show what I’m talking about since most of the comments I’ve gotten made me realize that many of my readers have never even considered reading a Web site on a cell phone.

It’s amazing just how much you can read on a two-inch screen. It’s also amazing how much better RSS is than Web sites. Why? No pretty logos to scroll through and no multi-column layouts to make text hard to read. Anyway, this isn’t something most bloggers can fix by themselves. They need blog templates that have thought about small phones.

Is this important? Well, come to CES and look at my phone.

Update: Ralph Whitbeck asks: “Who really browses on their cell phone anyways?”

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

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51 thoughts on “A little more on mobile Websites”

  1. Cruel World, eh? Yah can’t always get what yah want (and no amount of blog rants and whining will change it).

    Like

  2. Cruel World, eh? Yah can’t always get what yah want (and no amount of blog rants and whining will change it).

    Like

  3. “Is this important? Well, come to CES and look at my phone.”

    But Bobby, what does your phone have to do with this? The importance isn’t determined by the handy, but rather by the usefulness of the info. Some of us have been able to get Internet on the mobile for the last 5 years or so (Nokia 9000 in Y2k). The availability of cutting edge handsets in the US is a joke and has been since the beginning of mobile phones. To the rest of the world the 2125 isn’t that big a deal. (we had the older version earlier this year in Europe and reading pdfs and Office docs from the handset is a nice feature to have) Having mail on the handy is useful, but I’m not going to Jones if I can’t get my feeds when I’m not near the PB. Besides minimal email and some rudimentary scheduling/calendar sync, how does connectivity to the network on the handy enhance productivity for modern business users?

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  4. “Is this important? Well, come to CES and look at my phone.”

    But Bobby, what does your phone have to do with this? The importance isn’t determined by the handy, but rather by the usefulness of the info. Some of us have been able to get Internet on the mobile for the last 5 years or so (Nokia 9000 in Y2k). The availability of cutting edge handsets in the US is a joke and has been since the beginning of mobile phones. To the rest of the world the 2125 isn’t that big a deal. (we had the older version earlier this year in Europe and reading pdfs and Office docs from the handset is a nice feature to have) Having mail on the handy is useful, but I’m not going to Jones if I can’t get my feeds when I’m not near the PB. Besides minimal email and some rudimentary scheduling/calendar sync, how does connectivity to the network on the handy enhance productivity for modern business users?

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  5. bubba: I get all my emails on my phone so if something important happens I know it. Same for my top 20 RSS feeds. Same for my favorite 10 Web sites.

    I’m a weirdo, though. I’m stuck in airports a lot and at Maryam’s family’s houses during dinners where they are all talking Farsi and I’m bored. So, a little look into the world through my phone is a real blessing.

    Not to mention the occassional thing where I need a phone number, or an address, or need to do a search for movie tickets, or a look at Seattle’s traffic.

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  6. bubba: I get all my emails on my phone so if something important happens I know it. Same for my top 20 RSS feeds. Same for my favorite 10 Web sites.

    I’m a weirdo, though. I’m stuck in airports a lot and at Maryam’s family’s houses during dinners where they are all talking Farsi and I’m bored. So, a little look into the world through my phone is a real blessing.

    Not to mention the occassional thing where I need a phone number, or an address, or need to do a search for movie tickets, or a look at Seattle’s traffic.

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  7. Pingback: Pants Land
  8. Pingback: Pig Work - Web Standards Compliant Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » Making Your Blog A Mobile Experience

  9. Yahoo webmail also seems to be broken on an iPaq running Windows Mobile 2003. I think it is because they decided to start using nice little buttons which don’t do anything under Mobile when you push them. This has happened for about the last month when they stopped having a screen which said it looks like you’re using a version of mail for a later browser and would you like to download IE6 or switch back to an older version of the site.

    Annoyingly my ISP (which is a branded version of Yahoo) still advertises the webmail as working with WAP.

    The annoying thing about this? The reason I went for the iPaq and mobile solution rather than the Blackberry (which work also offered) was precisely because it offers a better internet experience.

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  10. Yahoo webmail also seems to be broken on an iPaq running Windows Mobile 2003. I think it is because they decided to start using nice little buttons which don’t do anything under Mobile when you push them. This has happened for about the last month when they stopped having a screen which said it looks like you’re using a version of mail for a later browser and would you like to download IE6 or switch back to an older version of the site.

    Annoyingly my ISP (which is a branded version of Yahoo) still advertises the webmail as working with WAP.

    The annoying thing about this? The reason I went for the iPaq and mobile solution rather than the Blackberry (which work also offered) was precisely because it offers a better internet experience.

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  11. Another look at what Scoble is saying.

    In India, even $400 PC are too costly. Most of India knows Mobiles more than PCs. I do not think that China is much different from India.

    Hence, there will be more mobiles than PCs. Smartphones and browsing will come in time as Indians and Chinese upgrade their mobiles. Hence mobile browsing is important.

    (Machine translation of sites is also important for India. AltaVista does Europe and China but leaves India alone)

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  12. Another look at what Scoble is saying.

    In India, even $400 PC are too costly. Most of India knows Mobiles more than PCs. I do not think that China is much different from India.

    Hence, there will be more mobiles than PCs. Smartphones and browsing will come in time as Indians and Chinese upgrade their mobiles. Hence mobile browsing is important.

    (Machine translation of sites is also important for India. AltaVista does Europe and China but leaves India alone)

    Like

  15. Hey looking at your new site (wordpress) on my Blackberry t-Mobile I get nothing but a blank screen. Perhaps you should look inward and discover what you can do to help!

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  16. Hey looking at your new site (wordpress) on my Blackberry t-Mobile I get nothing but a blank screen. Perhaps you should look inward and discover what you can do to help!

    Like

  17. I’m with you. I surf a lot from my PSP (not a cell phone, but you get the idea) and there are sites that work really well (bloglines mobile, gmail, gada.be) others that work reasonably well (windows live mail beta) and others work horribly (digg — oh, how shameful that digg can’t be viewed well on my PSP).

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  18. I’m with you. I surf a lot from my PSP (not a cell phone, but you get the idea) and there are sites that work really well (bloglines mobile, gmail, gada.be) others that work reasonably well (windows live mail beta) and others work horribly (digg — oh, how shameful that digg can’t be viewed well on my PSP).

    Like

  19. I’m increasingly using my SmartPhone for web based stuff from Exchange ActiveSync to the Windows Live Mobile beta (which is pretty damn good in my opinion)

    I’m slowly working on a mobile version of my blog (a bit of an issue as it runs on SharePoint) so I know that it’s a bit slow at present until I get ows.js out of the equation for that version of the page.

    I can definitely see this year goign the way of the mini-mobile device.

    Like

  20. I’m increasingly using my SmartPhone for web based stuff from Exchange ActiveSync to the Windows Live Mobile beta (which is pretty damn good in my opinion)

    I’m slowly working on a mobile version of my blog (a bit of an issue as it runs on SharePoint) so I know that it’s a bit slow at present until I get ows.js out of the equation for that version of the page.

    I can definitely see this year goign the way of the mini-mobile device.

    Like

  21. If you read a lot of blogs or RSS enabled sites on your cell phone, then you might want to consider setting up planet (http://planetplanet.org/). It is a feed aggregator that spits out all of your feeds in one HTML page. It uses templates, so you could just design a template the looks good on your phone.

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  22. If you read a lot of blogs or RSS enabled sites on your cell phone, then you might want to consider setting up planet (http://planetplanet.org/). It is a feed aggregator that spits out all of your feeds in one HTML page. It uses templates, so you could just design a template the looks good on your phone.

    Like

  23. Some site designs need to have the navigation on top. I’ve found the best way is to have a “skip navigation” link going to an anchor on the top of the content div.

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  24. Some site designs need to have the navigation on top. I’ve found the best way is to have a “skip navigation” link going to an anchor on the top of the content div.

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  26. Ignoring the problem that some people have like 400 links/blogroll/whatever in their navigation (largely a crime of the blog community, not most websites), I don’t see having navigation first as a problem. The problem would be FAR larger with navigation underneath content, particularly on pages with a lot of content. Imagine you are going to a site specifically to go to an inner section, for instance if you are looking for tech support, a message board, links section, whatever. If navigation is not first, you get the pleasure of scrolling for quite a long time to get to that content.

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  27. Ignoring the problem that some people have like 400 links/blogroll/whatever in their navigation (largely a crime of the blog community, not most websites), I don’t see having navigation first as a problem. The problem would be FAR larger with navigation underneath content, particularly on pages with a lot of content. Imagine you are going to a site specifically to go to an inner section, for instance if you are looking for tech support, a message board, links section, whatever. If navigation is not first, you get the pleasure of scrolling for quite a long time to get to that content.

    Like

  28. This would be a lot easier if the most used browser had decent CSS support. Fix that and maybe web developers will bother taking the time to design for multiple media.

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  29. This would be a lot easier if the most used browser had decent CSS support. Fix that and maybe web developers will bother taking the time to design for multiple media.

    Like

  30. Well, I live in Japan and have fast internet access on my cell phone (386kbps if I’m not mistaken), so I browse a lot on my cell phone. In fact, at work I made a site for cell phones that helps with trading of stocks (http://m.gchello.co.jp/demo) It was created to keep it as simple as possible. It’s so nice to be able to do everything from my cell phone no matter where I am. I even created some custom scripts to administrate my servers from my cell phone.

    Jon

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  31. Well, I live in Japan and have fast internet access on my cell phone (386kbps if I’m not mistaken), so I browse a lot on my cell phone. In fact, at work I made a site for cell phones that helps with trading of stocks (http://m.gchello.co.jp/demo) It was created to keep it as simple as possible. It’s so nice to be able to do everything from my cell phone no matter where I am. I even created some custom scripts to administrate my servers from my cell phone.

    Jon

    Like

  32. I think the fantastic potential of the mobile phone is simply the number of pockets they sit in and in all situations. Give mobiles a couple of ‘killer apps’ and we’ll see some major movement for sure. And if I were a business getting a commercial website done now I’d be looking seriously at that platform as a matter of course. Maybe I’d consider dealing with the issues server side and providing mobiles with a cut down content or something specifically for the small screen. The next few years will be quite interesting to watch for sure.

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  33. I think the fantastic potential of the mobile phone is simply the number of pockets they sit in and in all situations. Give mobiles a couple of ‘killer apps’ and we’ll see some major movement for sure. And if I were a business getting a commercial website done now I’d be looking seriously at that platform as a matter of course. Maybe I’d consider dealing with the issues server side and providing mobiles with a cut down content or something specifically for the small screen. The next few years will be quite interesting to watch for sure.

    Like

  34. I had j2me-enabled phone with a pathetic web browser. Now that Opera mini is already available, my web browsing has gone up 10x.

    Most sites are still a problem, but using Google’s XHTML reformatter (http://www.google.com/gwt/n) they become more readable. It takes the bloat out of problematic sites, and optionally you can turn off images. It even fixes a site with a navigation on top by ‘collapsing’ the navigation section when you browse a page. There is a button/link available to expand the navigation.

    Like

  35. I had j2me-enabled phone with a pathetic web browser. Now that Opera mini is already available, my web browsing has gone up 10x.

    Most sites are still a problem, but using Google’s XHTML reformatter (http://www.google.com/gwt/n) they become more readable. It takes the bloat out of problematic sites, and optionally you can turn off images. It even fixes a site with a navigation on top by ‘collapsing’ the navigation section when you browse a page. There is a button/link available to expand the navigation.

    Like

  38. Whoops, I forgot about the whole pre tag. Here is what my post should have looked like:

    I use Alex King’s WordPress mobile edition plugin. Then to make it auto-discover when using a cell phone to type in my url I insert the following into my wordpress theme’s header template:

    @import url( http://www.optoblog.com/wp-mobile.php );

    Is it bad that I do this? It seemed really simple, but I’m no expert in WAP and microbrowser standards.

    Like

  39. Whoops, I forgot about the whole pre tag. Here is what my post should have looked like:

    I use Alex King’s WordPress mobile edition plugin. Then to make it auto-discover when using a cell phone to type in my url I insert the following into my wordpress theme’s header template:

    @import url( http://www.optoblog.com/wp-mobile.php );

    Is it bad that I do this? It seemed really simple, but I’m no expert in WAP and microbrowser standards.

    Like

  40. Let’s try this again with the xmp tag.

    I use Alex King’s WordPress mobile edition plugin. Then to make it auto-discover when using a cell phone to type in my url I insert the following into my wordpress theme’s header template:

    @import url( http://www.optoblog.com/wp-mobile.php );

    Is it bad that I do this? It seemed really simple, but I’m no expert in WAP and microbrowser standards.

    Like

  41. Let’s try this again with the xmp tag.

    I use Alex King’s WordPress mobile edition plugin. Then to make it auto-discover when using a cell phone to type in my url I insert the following into my wordpress theme’s header template:

    @import url( http://www.optoblog.com/wp-mobile.php );

    Is it bad that I do this? It seemed really simple, but I’m no expert in WAP and microbrowser standards.

    Like

  42. Okay, now I’ll try unicode. (Can someone delete the other 3 comments I made?)

    I use Alex King’s WordPress mobile edition plugin. Then to make it auto-discover when using a cell phone to type in my url I insert the following into my wordpress theme’s header template:

    <style type=”text/css” media=”handheld”>
    @import url( http://www.optoblog.com/wp-mobile.php );
    </style>

    Is it bad that I do this? It seemed really simple, but I’m no expert in WAP and microbrowser standards.

    Like

  43. Okay, now I’ll try unicode. (Can someone delete the other 3 comments I made?)

    I use Alex King’s WordPress mobile edition plugin. Then to make it auto-discover when using a cell phone to type in my url I insert the following into my wordpress theme’s header template:

    <style type=”text/css” media=”handheld”>
    @import url( http://www.optoblog.com/wp-mobile.php );
    </style>

    Is it bad that I do this? It seemed really simple, but I’m no expert in WAP and microbrowser standards.

    Like

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