Saturday, January 19, 2008

One Web or two?

There has been a lot of blog talk this week regarding the argument for and against having mobile friendly sites. This is a subject close to my heart as I have been using the mobile web since wap was first introduced for the mobile phone. I currently use opera mini, even though I have a full mobile browser on my phone as well. This argument has come around due to the iphone having a full browser and being sold as "having the real web" in your pocket. My personal view is that there should be only one web as technology has solved the problem for us with better browsers. The one reason why wap didn't succeed is that it didn't deliver what it promised and what people wanted. Opera mini runs on the majority of phones and displays full web pages with a zoom function (just like the iphone browser) and I don't know what I would do without it. What has this got to do with being conectd you might ask? Well simply, give people a good experience of something that they are familiar with (the web they see on their PC) and they will want to use it anywhere. There are a lot of iphone users that have actually complained about "cut down" web sites when they want the full web experience, because it was one of the reasons they bought it. Once you've had the full web, believe me cut down or mobile versions just don't seem the same again. Then again I use Google Reader Mobile on my phone as the full version just doesn't work in opera mini. So here is my recommendation, you always see websites that say this has been tested with (or is compatible) with IE6, Firefox 2.X, Safari etc, well why not add opera mini to that list. This will tell people that this site is "mobile friendly" and they haven't had to even create two websites, now that's a thought!

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