New Tools Help Create Cellphone-Friendly Web Sites

David Kesmodel from WSJ writes "New low-cost tools are making it easier for companies to register and build Web sites designed for cellphones, the Wall Street Journal reports. Domain-name registrars such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions are starting to roll out all-inclusive packages to target the mobile Web. And mobile-content specialists such as the U.K.'s Bango Ltd. offer their own mobile kits that help companies set up a basic mobile Web presence. Even so, the wireless Internet is still a long way from attracting a critical mass of users."

Rediscovered

[HomelessInLaJolla]

The value of concise plain text. Maybe they'll patent the CSS for "plain text" before the end of the year.

A novel alternative

[symes]

If I'm out and about and need to look something up on the web I no longer try and use my mobo... call me lazy if you want, but I ring someone up who is most likely sat in front of a machine and kindly as them to do it for me. I don't know if it's me, my eyesight or what (ok, enough of the porn gags) but I just find it really hard to anything useful on such a small screen. Particularly as I usually carry a tablet and can usually find a wireless network. Surfing the net on my phone is a neat idea, I just can't see anyone using it a great deal. Am I alone here?

Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need to create a different website for mobile devices. Go look at the latest Nokia phones (or the Apple iPhone). Their KHTML-based browser can show me most websites just like they appear on my desktop, and it's not difficult to navigate them even with the smaller screen. With 3G, surfing is finally fast enough to be actually usable.

Now, considering mobile technology most likely only keeps getting better, creating separate "mobile" websites seems like a waste of time and money.

No users -- no point

[shalunov]

The success story that the article talks about is about getting one lead a day only. If 5% of these convert into visitors who actually come and stay at the inn, that's 1 or 2 new visitors per month. Unlikely to be worth any trouble with the website. The inn owner would have been better off spending that money on Google AdWords. He's effectively attracting callers with what must be tens of dollars per call cost. If that's the success story, what's the typical outcome?

Re:They need special tools

[nthomas]

They need special tools to make simple text websites?

I have found that you don't need to have specialized tools or make special websites for mobile devices as long as you follow the standards and generally accepted web design principles.

Case in point: I was able to surf on Google on my BlackBerry just fine, even before they added a special mobile section. Google more or less used sane HTML+CSS and I really didn't have any major issues with them.

Other sites however, were doing funky things with JavaScript and Flash and other non-standard or ill-conceived technologies (e.g. by making their site completely useless unless you were running MSIE 6.x at exactly 1024x768 with ActiveX enabled) so I was never able to visit them at all.

No special tool can compensate for lack of common sense

Thomas

This is bassackwards

[Rix]

Wouldn't it make *much* more sense to standardize on mobi.domain.tld? I don't see any reason for a separate tld for this, other than to make registrars money?

-1 Spam.