Mobile Friendly Site Specification

[Andy Sjostrom]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.evmo.com/evmo_desktop/Default.aspx?pageID=173' target='_blank'>http://www.evmo.com/evmo_desktop/De...aspx?pageID=173</a><br /><br /></div>Evolution Mobile announced recently a program meant to assist users to identify web sites that are compatible with handheld or smartphone devices. According to Evolution Mobile, 98% of all "next generation" mobile devices have one of three widths and a logo was created for each screen size. Webmasters can place the logo on their web sites to indicate mobile friendliness. These are the logotypes:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/safe_01.GIF" /><br /><br />You can <a href="http://www.pxsafe.com/pxsafe_handbook.pdf">download the requirements</a> if you are interested in more details! The download is a four page PDF document. Read on to see the core requirements! <!><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/req.GIF" />

[ricksfiona]

Excellent idea.

[freitasm]

Great idea... But the site says last updated in Sep'03 and since then nothing else. Is it going to happen?

[PhMajerus]

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/safe_01.GIF

GREAT!
So the only thing that will be larger than 150 pixels on these sites is the "150px Safe" logo? ;-)

[bjornkeizers]

Well, it's a nice intention, but I really don't see the point in this. Most sites don't care about PPC or wireless users. hell, most don't even know what a PPC is.

And those sites that do cater to PPC's and handhelds in general already know the requirements because they are all users too!

[Mike Temporale]

Nice idea, crappy logo. How about something a little smaller? And maybe they could remove of reduce the PXSafe.Org text on the logo too.

[zzzmarcus]

Ouch... could you have make that logo a little uglier? I guess the 2 color scheme will make the gif's small and good for downloading but the contrast will overshadow any other content on the page and with the huge URL might as well be another banner ad.

[larryka]

I haven't read the full set of specs yet, but from the requirements in the screenshot posted above, this reminds me of the pages people produce for Avantgo channels. Most of the Avantgo pages I go to directly via WiFi/GPRS in PIE work fine (i.e. Weather Channel, Washington Post, etc.). Am I missing something?

[T-Will]

I wonder if they've ever heard about these new "color" screens that new PDA's use? :lol:

[Scott R]

A couple of thoughts...

1) What's with the 150-pixel version? I would expect one for the traditional Palm OS width (160 pixels). Sorry guys, but the Palm OS has been around so long that a lot of wireless mobile sites were written specifically for that size. For him to ignore that seems rather odd.

2) The fact that he's had to break this out into three categories demonstrates that making mobile-friendly versions of sites has become a big mess. On the desktop, I pretty much design all my sites around an 800-pixel width. This is pretty safe not only because most users are at this size or higher, but also because readability suffers if you have to read too long a line of text, so it's actually OK to not use all of the width of a higher-res screen. When I first started making mobile-friendly versions of some of my sites, I tweaked it for Blazer on the Palm OS at 160 pixels. I would put one graphical banner at the top, but keep most everything else text-based, which was/is a pretty good rule of thumb since even 2.5G wireless is still pretty slow. Well, now PDAs are getting much higher res screens, and a screen optimized for 160 pixels leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not sure there's any easy answer for this, and I don't really want to make more than two versions of my sites.

Scott