I am Joining the Mobile Web

Posted on October 23, 2009 by Tony Fendall.
Categories: Blogging, Technology.

Mobile Safari Today I followed the cue of the rest of the web and installed a new theme on my blog for mobile devices.  If you are viewing this post on an iPhone, iPod or Android touch mobile device, then you probably already knew that.  If not, check it out some time and let me know what you think :)

People close to me know how often I complain about websites which install mobile versions.  “I paid $500 so I could have a device capable of viewing your regular website just fine. Why do you force me to use this broken, useless imitation of a website?”

Lifehacker.com is a classic example of a site which installed a mobile theme because it was trendy but which is also broken and unusable.  All links in the original post are removed from the mobile version (wtf?) and images are gone too.  To top it off they have a “view classic Lifehacker” link at the top but this takes you to the home page, not the post you were viewing.  Clicking on the post from the home page then takes you back to the mobile version >.<  I still go there on my iPhone from time to time, but a piece of me dies every time :(

You’ll be happy to know that my mobile version does not have any of these issues (if you find issues, please let me know).  I am using a very well made Wordpress plugin called WPtouch which does a great job of handling the mobile version of things without effecting my primary theme.  The best part is, if you don’t like the mobile version, you can simply turn it off (with the switch at the bottom) and you wont have to see it again :)

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Comment on October 24th, 2009.

Lol, random compass. XD
I think I prefer just viewing normal sites on mobile devices. Just have to scroll around a bit more is all. No need to mess with the site layout and looks..

Comment on October 24th, 2009.

This is true. There are some cases where the main website theme is too heavy for a mobile device which is why I have this one. It’s nice to have the option either way.

Comment on November 5th, 2009.

YOU ROCK! Do you have any ‘in work’ examples of postacard that would load a local background jpg, or one defined by xml instead of flicker ? This code is fantastic but a little hard to minimize. I just need the text editor with back ground and other image loading and drag positioning.
I am willing to Donate.

Old and Slow
Dennis

Thanks

Dennnid