Creating a mobile-friendly template

Yes, I would like to see one too. I have dabbled in making one before, where basically it’s just a stripped-down template without CSS and only using one column, but I just don’t have an artist’s eye… if anybody has a a decent template, I’d like to see it too. ??

I’m thinking of taking my 3-column blog and ripping out two of the columns. But the problem is all the pictures I post on the blog, the mobile template will be 200px wide and I have 500px wide images. They either need to be removed from the mobile site, or automatically shrunk.

Linking to a stylesheet with media=??handheld?? and other XHTML template approaches would be ideal in a perfect world, and in no way am I suggesting that sites should not do that as part of their mobile solution.

Unfortunately, not all 2 billion plus mobile phones in the world support XHTML MP / CSS, and the ones that do so offer varying support for those standards. There are also issues of a specific phones media support, screen size and network speed. Throw into that mix the notion that 1.) Perhaps browsing is not necessarily the best use case for mobile users and 2. ) Perhaps you wish to have your mobile site take advantage of the fact it is being viewed from a phone by interacting with phones’ inherent features.

If anyone wants to explore this topic more, Cameron Moll has done a great job offering insight and options in this series he wrote on mobile web design:

Mobile Web Design: Methods to the Madness (which contains a great chart comparing various methods)
https://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000428.html

Mobile Web Design: Tips & Techniques
https://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000577.html

From my perspective it is more than just publishing content (Separate set of templates) to a mobile environment or automagically squeezing a Web site onto a small screen (Opera Mini). It is about the individuals it engages, the people it connects, the dialogue that develops, the community that forms and the collective action that can result. Providing mobile solutions with this in mind requires more then stylesheets and transcoding services to get the job done.

Thanks for that info, Dave!!

Here’s another take on it….

https://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/07/make-your-site-mobile-friendly

Interesting thought, even if I doubt that mobile phones with small screens are the best targets. There are other devices though, and I believe all modern wired mobile devices would be able to accept XHTML Basic – WML reader.

About the images, it requires a lot of bandwidth and slows down the transfer. The same rules apply as for desktop browsers on narrow lines: The longer a user waits for an image to download, the more exciting it has to be ??

I use the popular, but aging Ericsson T610, and when I go to my website, the images are automatically scaled to fit my phone. I guess this is the work of my service provider. The scaling is definitely not done in the phone.

Sigh, just when you thought it was a pain the azz to have templates working/looking good in IE, FF and other browsers, now you have to worry about it being Mobile friendly too..Jesus! =( I guess, I’ll worry about that in a latter time or something lol!

spencerp

spencerp: You don’t have to rush it!
Better mobile devices and more bandwidth are around the corner, I’d bet.