Publishing 2.0 - Latest Comments in Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

tomas zeman — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:12:08 -0000

I think situation is getting better and better. I predict, that in future, more people will access internet from their mobile phones and owners of the sites will create mobile werindly versions before full internet versions.

Thants what we do at our company.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

lawrence — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:56:22 -0000

Boingo Service is very flaky. I believe a GPRS service from BB is probably better if you are doing only Email.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

lipton — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:33:10 -0000

I never had a good experience with Boingo Wireless

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

kl — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:43:31 -0000

Try OperaMini. Seriously. It solved all these problems!

It's a proxy that compresses pages before sending them on slow crappy wireless network.

It's a client that reformats pages to fit on small screen. It has zoom AND it wraps text to your screen width. No need for horizontal scrolling when reading.

BTW: iPhone isn't that bad. You can set up VPN+proxy that will remove ads and compress pages a bit (not as well as OperaMini though). Zoom is pretty useful and mobile Safari enlarges text, so actually you don't have to zoom that much.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

majax — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:01:50 -0000

Clearly a US centric post. The mobile market in the US sucks, but in the old world the mobile web is a reality. It works and it's reliable.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Tom — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 05:05:04 -0000

Agree with small screens. But speed is not an issu here in Europe where we have 3G networks all over [or nearly all over, growing fast anyway].

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Dan Schawbel — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:43:51 -0000

You need some kind of zoom lense to see anything on a mobile phone...it's rediculous.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Mark Evans — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:48:59 -0000

Scott,
If you really want to experience bad wireless mobile service, come up to Canada where there's no such thing as real all-you-call eat data plans. When the iPhone eventually gets to Canada, do not be surprised to see many people go ballistic when they get their bills.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

David Cushman — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:18:54 -0000

It's all about understanding what services suit the computer in your pocket. It is a new media - not an old media squeezed on to a new one.
Can I recommend Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen's Mobile as 7th Mass Media paper. You can get a copy by emailing alan and asking. alanm (AT) smlxtralarge (DOT) com

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Steve Paine — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:00:42 -0000

The mobile web doesnt have to suck, the problem is that you can't do it on a phone yet.
http://www.umpcportal.com/m...

PC-based devices are on their way. I use an Everun as a mobile web device (I do a LOT of mobile web and therefore its worth me taking a seperate device) but thats nothing compared to the size that we could see in 2008.

Check out this demonstrator:
http://www.umpcportal.com/m...

and this size comparison:
http://www.umpcportal.com/g...

Once someone has written some decent software, decent mobile web will be with us and we won't have to bother about optimised web pages any more.

Steve
UMPCPortal

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

topgold — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:11:15 -0000

Just wondering if you would consider optimising your site for display on a mobile phone screen. There are excellent tutorials floating around that show the appropriate CSS structures.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

majax — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 05:29:01 -0000

Poor thing is taking a beating at :

http://www.russellbeattie.c...

Seriously, Russel Beatie nails it pretty well. Your arguments are weak, at best.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

sotek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 05:00:06 -0000

Mobile web has a long way to go. Well, we all know that already. Nothing new here.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Ilossan — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 04:34:54 -0000

Tabloid headline for a tabloid post. Things like this discredit the writer.

Slow? Come over to Europe. WiFi? Well we didn´t get blazing broadband long ago, didn´t we?
And above all, Mobile web is NOT what you see in the desktop screen but in your phone. It is a completely different thing. Or is it IPTV the same as conventional TV but on your computer?

Honestly, the post is so shortsighted that I think you actually wrote it on purpose to generate comments and links...

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Garth — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:37:13 -0000

6. The horrible wordpress plugin that makes simple posts like this take 300k on a mobile browser. ZDnet hosts the only blogs that load fast in mobile browsers.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Alexander van Elsas — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:08:44 -0000

Hi Scott, I wrote a very similar article a while back. Excellent points, I had similar issues and added a few different ones:
- The interface is just not intuitive
- There might be a psychological barrier for people to download new apps to their mobile phone (it's their private space)
- Lack of truly good services

If you're interesterd here is the article:
http://vanelsas.wordpress.c...

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

jopemoro — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:56:58 -0000

Heh... isn't that a US-specific problem? You're still so behind on mobile it's amazing... ;)

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Richard Holloway — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:29:38 -0000

I've got to echo ceedee's call. It's a US thing.
I'm on the 3G network in the UK, I'm able to stream Orb on my phone, access my desktop, browse the web, download podcasts and all on an N73. Never really had a problem with speed...

It's nice that for once you americans are behind us in something.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Jason — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:57:06 -0000

I agree with just about all of the above and am completely against the blog post from Russel
Russell Beattie’s Weblog

http://www.russellbeattie.c...

First of all he has no right to call the writer of this post a moron. Quite frankly who the fuck is Russell Beattle? And in fact who the fuck cares? Like he says "...because I can't shut up". Maybe he should really try. Either that or he should try and submit some intelligent comment to this debate. I will comment later on the five points discussed in this blog later. I would respond on Beatles blog but he has switch off comments. A real sign of a self righteous ass hole if you ask me.

Have a nice day

Jason
Paris, France

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Ben Field — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:01:52 -0000

Scott, the point about optimizing for small screens is a good one: with optimized pages, the mobile web can look a lot better.

I have found that mobile Safari actually works really well for unoptimized pages, and I haven't found it to be as difficult as you suggest. I realize you must have tried it yourself, since you compare it to "surfing the web through a keyhole." Great metaphor. It must have been annoying for you. My experience is quite different, though. I surf the web on my iPhone all the time, and I feel like it adds as much to the experience as it takes away. I love to be able to double-tap and enlarge photos or paragraphs to fill the whole screen, then double-tap back out and move around. I love the way it steps me through forms. It helps me focus on one thing at a time, which I enjoy, and it's super quick to navigate.

So, here's why I think this matters: optimizing pages will help the mobile web, but before the iPhone made unoptimized pages look good and work well on a mobile device, I as a web developer had no desire to even mess with optimizing. But see, the iPhone has validated mobile devices as web browsing tools, and now I feel drawn to optimize my sites to make them look even better. Small changes to CSS make a big difference on the iPhone.

I think, thanks to the iPhone, we can be ready to see the mobile web "suck" a whole lot less. Time will tell if I'm right, but I think it's a trend worth watching.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

David — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:37:01 -0000

In Japan nobody seems to have a problem with connection speeds or accessing the web on their phones.

We will most likely see two parallel webs, one for regular computer screens, and one optimised for mobile devices. Many sites already have that, especially in Europe and Japan. But as usual, the US lags when it comes to mobile tech...

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Mohasin — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:20:01 -0000

Scott, I understand your frustration with mobile browsing. But believe me, things are changing fast. I know lot of web services who have started providing alternate websites which server web pages optimized for mobile phones. I have shared the same pain as you have and thats the reason why I started compiling this list of websites which are optimized for mobile phones (http://digitallysmart.blogs....

I agree that mobile networks are slow. But there are ways to circumvent those. For example, have you tried Opera Mini beta. It the best mobile phone browser ever. Not only does it have great usability, but also does something intelligently. What Opera does is that it does not download the actual web site. It instead downloads the web page to their proxy servers and then optimizes and reduces the size of the page by approximately 70%. So ultimately the downloading and rendering speed of the pages on a mobile phone is highly increased.

I personally believe that future belongs to mobile computing. But yes it is takes time.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Jonathan Grubb — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:14:57 -0000

Scott, I don't know who you are, and I usually don't like to be mean to people I don't know, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Your post demonstrates both your cluelessness about the mobile web in general and a complete lack of global perspective.

There are a lot of problems with the mobile web, but you don't list any of them. I'm happy to enlighten you if you are interested.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Mark — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:05:39 -0000

I don't get all this negativity. I was using email on the Newton in 1995 over the FM band. That was slow. I just moved from T-Mobile using a BB to the iPhone. Had to use Opera on the BB for some some of the sites I needed. But it kept crashing. Moved to the iPhone, and it's like night and day. Edge is much faster than GPRS or maybe it's the BB don't know. But as far as I'm concerned using the BB OS is akin to to a chisel and stone compared to the iPhone. I have to use web 2.0 sites all day long. Before it was drudgery now it's a joy. It's all in how you look at it I guess.

Re: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks

Soham — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:23:12 -0000

Add to this:

1) Web pages getting more complex. Ajax?

2) Not enough battery life on most mobile phones yet. The constant need to find an electric outlet!