I got a new iPod touch a week or so ago, and have been browsing to many of my favorite sites with it. One thing that a lot of sites do is detect that I'm on a mobile device (and sometimes specifically an iPhone or iPod Touch) and send me to the mobile version of the page. At first, I really liked this, as it made the pages easier to read without zooming. But what I quickly realized is that many sites provide a crippled version of their pages to mobile users. For instance,
Twitter doesn't seem to provide a way to follow someone when you view their page in mobile mode (if they do, I couldn't find it) (update: when I viewed the mobile page in my full-screen monitor, I found the follow link, I wonder why I can't find it in the mobile browser) and
Gizmodo only shows the top three articles and summaries rather than the full content. In any event, I find myself switching to the non-mobile version of the pages more often than not, simply to get the interface I'm used to. So, what do you think, should companies provide these alternate pages?
Sounds like an addiction problem. Dump the iPod.
Only if it makes business sense.
Speaking of “automatically routing you to a mobile site” how do they do that? I have a site that has a css flyout menu that gets lost in the translation to the mobile browsers I’ve tested with. How do I determine if the user is on a mobile device and supply a simpler menu? There is no javascript, so I can’t just use noscript.
I think automatic forwarding is fine. Mobile versions of websites are scaled-down for a reason: to make it quick. Most mobile devices can not handle all of the features that a full-fledged computer can, which will invariably lead to improper rendering or even “broken” pages. Though, I will agree that providing less information (in most cases) is bad, I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to websites for mobile devices. A very good article explaining how to initiate mobile device detection and redirection on the Microsoft Windows ASP.net platform can be found on our blog at: http://blog.abwebsitedesign.com/2008/09/mobile-web-browser-detection-and.html
Cheers,
Chris
I like having available mobile site options; however, I want the option to go to the “full” version so I can use all the features if that’s what I prefer. Providing that switch option shows the designers understand we all have preferences and they want us to read their content. You know — a desire to communicate their information to me. If they don’t care for me to see it, why should I care to see it? We haven’t provided mobile views from our site as yet. But our viewers have been asking “when”. I don’t think this can be ignored.