Notice: This is a discussion thread for comments about the SitePoint article, Mobile Web Design: Be Swift About It!.
Good article. I agree, us web designers need to be alert to this growing market. The way we build websites now, may not be the same a few years from now.
Which mobile SaaS to platform is considered the best: MobiSiteGalore or MoFuse or Wapple?
Great resources. The mobile industry is still in it’s infancy in the us but there are slot of great tools out there to get webmasters started. One of our most popular is a send to phone script so regular site visitors can SMS themselves a link to your mobile content.
Good contents, the mobile website would popular now. have not tried to do this, 2009 should study it
I’ve been long predicting “in my own mind” that in 10 years, maybe less, it will be common practice to use a mobile device first, t.v. second, something else third, something else fourth, and a way distant 5th will be our computers when accessing the web…if we still call it the web in 10 years that is.
Very good artcle.
JFP
Nah, the PC will still be tops. Unless the design of the mobile changes drastically, PC is still up there. Not to say dont design for the mobile device, youd be crazy not to. Definitely will be a force to be reckoned with.
We at Aradiom have taken the Rich User Experience Client approach primarily based on Java ME to tackle the “slowness” of the mobile networks and to address the current inadequacies of the mobile web. It also allows you to embed algorithms.
very good one, exactly what I was thinking off couple of days ago … thanks for the article
Great article, webmasters need to start worrying about mobile web design especially since 3G is becoming a widely used network ever since Google made their G1 and other companies as well!
Making a mobile phone compatible website is trivial if the phone has an XHTML browser. 4 years ago I was stationed in a remote area with nothing but my mobile phone and I made a web site for myself that parsed news from several websites and books that I uploaded previously so that all could be displayed on my mobile phone. Now with Opera mini and similar highly capable browser, it’s even easier.
The mobile phone Internet market Is growing At the rate of knots,There really needs to be more concentration on this market than ever before,The scope is really Large and the scope is going the be blasting In around 3+ Years.
I’ve made a few mobile sites.
The best thing to do is browser detect.
If its a mobile device browser redirect it to some page, else show normal page.
Best just to do that on the index / default page
@ mkoenig – What do you mean by a browser detect?
If is a mobile browser is a mobile and sould be sent to your mobile website.
thanks for the article, it’s very informative
Well yeah…
Mobile web design finally became a reality in 2008 after years of (broken) promises…
I haven’t really looked to closely at mobile-based design but I’m sure there’s more to it then just sticking your RSS feed into an application like Swift 
@ Amirmullick3 this is a browser detect and redirect.
If you don’t have time to develop a full blown mobile page you can just create a few mobile pages (mostly text) with contact info or whatever.
For us people would most likely be coming to our site (a .gov) looking for departmental contact. dss, health department, tax office etc. So we just have a few pages like that.
Just put the following code at the top of your index.php (if running php)
Be sure to change the
$site = “http://mobile.yourwebsite.com”;
to your mobile sites url.
<?
//Checks to see if user is on a mobile device and redirects if they are
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$site = "http://mobile.yourwebsite.com";
if (eregi("BlackBerry", $agent)) {
header( "Location: $site" ) ;
}
if (eregi("NetFront", $agent)) {
header( "Location: $site" ) ;
}
if (eregi("Palm OS", $agent)) {
header( "Location: $site" ) ;
}
if (eregi("Blazer", $agent)) {
header( "Location: $site" ) ;
}
if (eregi("Plucker", $agent)) {
header( "Location: $site" ) ;
}
if (eregi("AvantGo", $agent)) {
header( "Location: $site" ) ;
}
//OK... user not mobile show normal content
?>
Hope that helps someone, if not just ignore it
also i don’t know what browser iphone uses this is a few years old. Maybe someone could also ad that.
What mobile devices will it check to see? Only the ones in the code?
To be truthful im not sure we wrote a list of mobile devices and found script, we then added a few to the list.
It’s been at least 2 years, so i imagine the newer devices are not covered.
Im guessing safari for the iphone? I really have no clue. I know it does a great job of rendering the standard 800x600 or 1024x768 without you having to redirect it.
The Avant is a popular browser that you can download and install on some devices including the blackberry.
As for common phones like standard nextel phone etc, im not sure.
Id test it out and see. Worst case scenario is the user will still get your regular site.
Just trying to help a bit. :x