While I’ve yet to see any significant traffic numbers indicating that people are surfing the web from their mobile devices (battery life, small screens and US mismanagement of the cellular data network are all big problems), two announcements today are lessening the impact these issues. Even more interesting is that the two approaches are coming from opposite directions:
1. Apple’s iPhone sports a fully functional Safari web browser. It shrinks images, and has user interface modes that let you browse any random website with a high degree of success. Comparatively, many sites like Google Maps often choke mobile browsers because of their heavy dependence on Javascript: mobile browsers have their own JS quirks, but also flat out lack the processing power needed for some implementations.
2. The WordPress Ultimate Gamer’s Pack: this is a collection of plugins to the WordPress blog publishing system that allows access from the:
- Nintendo Wii
- Nintendo DS
- Sony PSP
The plugins determine the user agent (browser) making a request and throws up the appropriate formatting for that particular device. Interestingly, they are going to release an Apple iPhone version as well.
While it’s difficult to imagine device specific publishing optimizations gaining widespread popularity they look like a good option for specialized sites and applications.
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