So far in this series we’ve travelled from me and my experience as an iPhone user to you and your current website design, to principles for creating content relevant to me on the move. In this last post we get slightly more technical.
Please bear in mind that hard code is not my area of expertise. If it’s yours, do use this forum to think through ideas - I know you will find some like minds here at the National Library.
Right. How do you go about optimising your site for me and my iPhone?
Test on iSafari
Mostly what I can do with Safari on my iPhone is the same as what I can do on a standard computer. But there are a few things I can’t do because, obviously, I am on an iPhone (which could equally be an iPod touch).
In summary, I’d appreciate you to bear that in mind and think about giving me some work-arounds for content I might want to access when I am out and about.
At the very least it would be nice if you tested your essential content out on Safari (that is, the content essential to me on the move). Here is what Safari on iPhone does not support:
- window.showModalDialog() or window.print()
- Mouse-over events
- Hover styles
- Tool tips
- Java applets
- Flash
- SVG
- XSLT
- Plug-in installation
- Custom x.509 certificates
- WML
- File uploads and downloads
You may be interested to run your site through one of these iPhone simulators to get a sense of what it looks like to me, though best if you have Safari running:
Note that if you can see a scroll bar, however, that is not what I am seeing on the iPhone. As I mentioned in an earlier post on getting to know the iUser, iUsers do not scroll.
Who is optimising for the iGeneration?
There are only a handful of sites out there that have truly optimised for the iPhone, by which I mean they recognise the iPhone as the user agent and take you to a version designed to work best in this device.
One of the more interesting sites with an iPhone equivalent, given the types of websites we work on here at the National Library, is the Encyclopedia Britannica. Unfortunately, unless you are reading this on your iPhone or iPod touch, you will not realise that what you see at http://i.eb.com/…
or the equivalent Encyclopedia Britannica for monitor or laptop web…
…is slightly different from the Encyclopedia Britannica I see on my iPhone.
All I get is a Home and Search bar across the top of a white page with this instruction, and a couple of suggested searches:
Press the “Search” button above to start exploring the encyclopedia!When I do press the Search button, it looks and acts like other built-in applications on my device. Magic.
Of course, running a ‘would someone want to access this content on the move?’ sanity check would probably be a good idea before deciding to join sites like Encyclopedia Britannica online. But the next section points you in some useful directions if the answer is yes.
iDeveloper sites
You'll notice I haven’t personally gone into the details of CSS for iPhone or mobile device users in this series, largely because I’m not fluent there. Others may wish to pick this up in the comments.
Nonetheless, here are some links to sites you might like to take a look at if you are thinking about developing content for mobile users more generally, and a few for Apple devices specifically:
- W3C Mobile web initiative
- W3C mobileOK Checker
- W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0
- Optimising a website for mobile devices - Modern nomads website
- 10 tips for developing i-phone applications
- iPhone development center from Apple
- Guide to web content and application design for Iphones from Apple
- Help me read your Wordpress blog on my iPhone
- iPhone human interface guidelines
But I’d prefer not to. Instead, I like the fact that organisations such as the Queensland University of Technology library have a mobile web design programme in place (PPT) and am just waiting for other libraries to follow their lead.
First library in New Zealand to optimise for mobile Safari?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that you design only for the iPhone or iPod touch. That would be a bit like creating digital content just for viewing on a SAMSUNG 15” monitor with IE version 7.0. In a utopian web world device is irrelevant - and the iPhone is definitely at the sophisticated end of a long continuum of mobile gadgets.
Nonetheless, as Elliott suggested in his response to the first post in this series, the iPhone is one of a suite of devices out there that we will need to test for as we enter a brave new world where space-time-information distances are ever-diminishing.
I think the mobile generation is where libraries and other organisations that provide ‘search for information’ services can really come into their own. Remember the chase in The Da Vinci Code where they search the British Library catalogue on the bus from Sophie’s phone? (um, so I have been told...)
There are so few websites out there that have optimised for mobile or iDevices (or even thought about it) that I believe we have a real opportunity to make our mark while we wait for the rest of the world wide web to catch up.
Anyone out there ready to take the leap?
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