I've been dabbling around with the mobile versions of some websites I use frequently on my Treo and have learned a few things about what I like and don't like about current implementations. But before getting into that, let me say that my favorite mobile websites are actually not mobile sites at all. They're websites that continue to be usable on my Treo without discovering a special mobile version.
Here's what I've learned so far:
The Good: Bloglines (www.bloglines.com/mobile): The web interface used on Bloglines uses frames and JavaScript, which makes it fairly mobile unfriendly. This is resolved in the mobile version by dropping the frame, then displaying the feeds in an outline structure. Much of the additional functionality, such as saving posts as new, e-mailing posts and saving posts are still usable in the mobile format.
<rant>If you think it's annoying to view truncated feeds using a computer, wait until you try it on a mobile device that forces you to click through to a non-mobile web page to view full posts. <rant>
The Bad: Gmail (m.gmail.com): Gmail suffers from over-optimization of their interface for mobile users. The biggest problems:
1. You can't select, then delete multiple e-mail messages, forcing users to click on each message, wait for it to load and then send it to the trash using a link at the end of the e-mails
2. Message body pagination. My Treo can load hundreds of kilobytes of content on a page, but Google Mobile truncates messages into painfully short pages. This may be useful for some mobile devices, but makes long messages unreadable on Treos. For example, one popular newsletter I receive is broken into 14 pages on Google Mobile.
The Ugly:
Dodgeball (www.dodgeball.com): Dodgeball is a service based on using mobile devices, yet doesn't offer a mobile interface for their website. What makes matters worse is that their site is as painfully unusable as a site could be on a Treo, without being completely unusable. For example, it requires images be turned on because they don't use ALT tags on their navigation. The pages become gigantic from a mobile perspective once graphics are turned on.
Dodgeball has the most to gain from a mobile interface because many more users would join the service if they could do so while hanging out with friends who just told them about the service.
What do you think?
What sites would you like to use on a mobile device, but can't due to poor mobile design? Are there any sites you find particularly useful for mobiles today?
1. Posted by: tom on February 5, 2006 3:04 PM:
Why waste time with Gmail? Use versamail to get to Gmail.
Some other good links:
Ebay: http://wap.ebay.com
Wikipedia: http://en.molinu.com
IMDB: http://www.arune.se/wap/imdb/index.php