Mowser, a start-up which provides a service that makes web sites mobile-friendly, is giving up. Founder Russell Beattie says:
I don’t actually believe in the “Mobile Web” anymore … anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time.
His point is that devices are adapting to enable browsing of the full web, making attempts to adapt the web to devices rather pointless. Which is pretty much what I said six months ago.
This isn’t absolute. As a mobile web user, I’ve appreciated mobile versions of sites like Google or the BBC. It soon becomes frustrating though, because so many sites are not designed to work well on mobile browsers, and never will be. Fix the mobile browser, and you get the lot.
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But isn’t the hardware restrictive still to make it properly useful? I mean I don’t want to be using a numeric keypad to enter URLs, sure you can use bookmarks but the lack of a proper keyboard and landscape viewing (on the N95/iphone) still don’t really deliver a great web experience.
Entering URLs can be a hassle, but I find performance and problems actually rendering the content to be the biggest issues. The iPhone has the best browser, but others are improving too. The point is that it’s the devices themselves that need to improve, rather than trying to get the Web to adapt itself to them.
Tim