May 5th, 2009
The mobile web is an utter letdown
With a definitive split on the Internet between desktops, notebooks and netbooks, and mobile devices running a list as long as your arm, the mobile web has developed to a molecule in an ocean.
This month I am spending most of my time in London doing research, so travelling by train back and forth from Canterbury, moving house half way across the city, trying to cram for my exams next month and heading to the north of the UK on the second weekend into May.
You can probably guess my main predicament of keeping in touch with the world whilst I am on the go.
Using Bluetooth technology to connect wirelessly from my laptop to the mobile phone network is one common way of keeping a connection active on the go, but browsing from experience, is poor due to the slow speeds. Even with a 3G or EDGE (2.75G) connection, it can be slower than a dead tortoise.
The mobile web sprung up some years ago, enabling mobile device users to view commonly accessed websites on the go, using a scaled down server-side version which loads faster on slow connections. This is good, and a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough as far as I am concerned.
Take a look at three commonly viewed websites and how they have been scaled down to fit mobile devices:
BBC News - desktop version, mobile version.
Facebook - desktop version, mobile version.
MSN/Windows Live - desktop version, mobile version.
There are two options which website developers have:
- Scriptilicious up the site so everything is automatically rendered for mobile devices when and where it detects them, via screen resolution or user agent string;
- Manually build the site for mobile users, providing them a limited access to a websites resources from their mobile device.
Either mobile websites can get better, or mobile browsers get better; one of the two. Having a standard browser rolled out to millions of people would work well, whereas having a dynamically generated website for mobile devices would reach a lesser audience.
Maybe I’m just ranting because I’m tired, but I think I at least make a point. The mobile web is a letdown.
Zack Whittaker, the youngest in the ZDNet network, is a British student at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he studies BA (Hons) Criminology and Social Policy. His insight into the next-generation is unique and first-hand, sharing his knowledge of the here and now but more so what's next and how to get there.
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