Let's Talk About .mobi

[Darius Wey]

<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060407-MobyMobi.jpg" /><br /><br />The .mobi TLD (top-level domain) is preparing for an official launch on May 22. Suffice to say, the world remains divided over its value, though some people like <a href="http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008931.html">Russell Beattie</a> seem to have reached a final conclusion - that is, it's here to stay and it's a 'good thing'. But is it really? Let's evaluate a few of the pros and cons. <!><br /><br /><b>Reasons to Love .mobi</b><br />• <i>It's easy to remember.</i> To mouth off a couple of examples, MSN Mobile is accessible via <a href="http://mobile.msn.com/">http://mobile.msn.com/</a> and BBC News is accessible via <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/">http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/</a>. A pain to remember? Maybe not, but try a hundred of your favourite mobile portals and you can see where all hell breaks loose. By replacing these confusing URLs with simple ones like msn.mobi and bbc.mobi, your neurons will thank you. In addition, the URLs of unknown sites no longer become a guessing game. They simply follow the format of &lt;companyname>.mobi.<br />• <i>.mobi sites follow a strict XHTML standard.</i> This ensures that just about any Web-enabled mobile device can access all content without a hitch. Other standards that must be adhered to are the exclusion of frames and zero reliance on 'www' in the URL. That's right - all up, it equates to less typing, more browsing, and more pages that (finally) fit that tiny screen.<br /><br /><b>Reasons to Hate .mobi</b><br />• <i>Another domain, another expense.</i> Content distribution via a mobile-friendly template can exist on a .com gTLD (generic top-level domain). If you visit <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/">our site</a> with your Pocket PC or Smartphone, you'll see it in action. Introducing a new .mobi standard increases costs by forcing site owners to register another domain. This might not be an issue for major companies, but for minor and/or non-profit companies, that added expense can bite hard on the budget.<br />• <i>Separation, not unification.</i> Some industry analysts have argued that the .mobi TLD only serves to divide the online world. Online resources should be widely accessible independent of the hardware being used, and naturally, all on the same domain. As mentioned earlier, content distribution via a desktop-friendly template and a mobile-friendly template can co-exist on the same TLD. Why turn away from this idea of 'unification' and instead separate our mobile and immobile operating environments via an exclusive .mobi TLD?<br /><br /><b>Some Real World Examples</b><br />But enough of the evaluating - why not try .mobi for yourself and see if it's worth it? Grab your Pocket PC or Smartphone, launch your web browser, and visit some of the concept sites currently available - to name a couple, <a href="http://weather.mobi/">weather.mobi</a> (a mobile weather portal hosted by The Weather Channel), and <a href="http://cityguide.mobi">cityguide.mobi</a> (a local city search site). Then considering the pros and cons mentioned above (and any others you may have in mind), tell us whether .mobi is the right way to go.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

As a content provider / site owner, I have to wonder what's going to happen to those of us who own one of the other TLD's. I mean, imagine if you own CNN, and someone comes along and registers CNN.mobi and it's for some legitimate site of some kind... You're going to see a string of domain hijacking and cybersquatting on the lines of which you've never seen in your life.

I think .mobi is nothing special, and the sites that are going to be there could have always been put on .com or .net if the site designer properly set up the detection for the user agents of mobile browsers (along the lines of what PPC Thoughts does). .Mobi could be cool, but in the end it's just unnecessary.

[racerx]

I'll give you that there is an additional cost and I understand that as a small business every cent counts, but the cost per year is minimal.

That said, I don't think the separation/unity argument holds much water. You can alway maintain the mobile portal at other urls and have your mobi url point to that. MSN.mobi points to mobile.msn.com and it just makes it easier for the user to remember and type in. PPCT.mobi is a LOT easier to type than www.pocketpcthoughts.com, even if it does auto-detect and format accordingly.

There should be great concern over domain-jacking, though. That could be a BIG problem if it isn't policed right. Guess we'll just have to wait &amp; see...

[d-roC]

I dont like .mobi. I think that its quite unnecessary because of cost to the site owners, reteaching site visitors, and it basically seperates the net into mobiles and not so moibles. Would a redirect work? Yes, could a redirect on cnn.com go to cnn.mobi and the user never have to remember a dang thing? Sure. Will it always be that simple? Nope.

However, this will be a great thing for selling mobile services. superbowl.mobi for exculsive pics and vids to download or something like that would be a nice adaptation of it. Make it mobile only content and it will pay for itself....eventually...or not.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

Would a redirect work? Yes, could a redirect on cnn.com go to cnn.mobi and the user never have to remember a dang thing? Sure.

And that's exactly my point. If you're going to redirect anyway, why do you need a whole new domain?

Doesn't really make sense to me, to be honest. I'm sure there's some big obvious plus that I'm just not seeing. :confused totally:

[JvanEkris]

To be honest, i just want to remember one URL: CNN (=the company) . COM (=global)

I do not want to know which browser i'm using currently and how it is serverd best, and switch manually. As i see it, the URL is the locater of the content, and the site should decide from there how to serve it's client best. This could be by serving a full-fledged site, it could be by serving a site that is optimized for mobile users, it could be by serving a RSS-feed.

Jaap

[Mark Kenepp]

If you're going to redirect anyway, why do you need a whole new domain?

Doesn't really make sense to me, to be honest. I'm sure there's some big obvious plus that I'm just not seeing. :confused totally:


Reasons to Hate .mobi
• Another domain, another expense.

I would suspect that that is a big plus, at least for the companies that make money off of domain name registration.

If you launch it, they will (have to) buy it.

[R K]

Reasons to Love .mobi
• .mobi sites follow a strict XHTML standard.

Reasons to Hate .mobi
• Separation, not unification.
As mobile technology advances, I think these are the two issues that come into concern. For instance, Windows Mobile 5 AKU2 is getting frames support in Internet Explorer (http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news2259.html).

Combine that with VGA and SVGA smartphones that are bound to come out in the future, and you have a TLD that has the potential of becoming obsolete.

[Gerard]

It's not only that such a TLD could become obsolete, it's that it should, before it even gets off the ground. Why settle for less, when browsers, plugins, and device screens are getting better and better at handling normal web pages? This is backwards thinking. I want more, not less. Who wants less? When I visit the mobile version of Google, I see links only, no descriptions. As a result I wind up tapping several times as many links, opening piles more pages, all because the mobile version lacks the descriptive excerpts from those pages. Similarly with the sample pages you've offered here in the .mobi style, there is less utlity, less information being offered. In the name of convenience? Come on, get real!

[Eugenia]

my husband blogged about .mobi a few months ago, and I think he had a point when he wrote that typing "mobi" on a numeric keypad is a pain in the butt: (10 key-presses! ;-)
http://jbq.livejournal.com/78522.html

If that was .wap, it would have been much-much better IMHO.

[applejosh]

my husband blogged about .mobi a few months ago, and I think he had a point when he wrote that typing "mobi" on a numeric keypad is a pain in the butt: (10 key-presses! ;-)

Thats' a good point. I never thought about that aspect, and apparently the powers that be didn't, either. :) (Maybe it's M$'s way of gently nudging non-Smartphone users to buy WM devices?)

[smilbandit]

I've been working on a site at wampad.com. Mobi kinda kills an idea I had in my head. I was going to set up a registery for number to url translation. Where you could go to the site via wampad by entering in the numbers. I was going to give away 5+ digit numbers and then sell the smaller numbers. Oh well not the only idea for the site, but it was the only one where I could make money without having to go the advertisement route.

Qr codes would have killed the idea too, but they seemed far away from being utilized in america.

[SteveHoward999]

Why not teach the ickle pet-lamb web developers what CSS is for?

[Eugenia]

I am sorry, but CSS only works in a handful of mobile browers only. And half of them don't "agree" to render CSS the same way. And if that's not all, only the new WM5 version of IE, Opera and the newer versions of Openwave's browser support the "media=handheld" directive in order to pick up the right version of the CSS code. In other words, only about 20% of all cellphones would pickup the mobile-CSS code. Even Netfront didn't support that on v3.1 or 3.2, can't remember which version.

The CSS way is indeed the best way to do mobile sites, IF, in a utopian world (that we don't live in), CSS was compatible on all browsers and if all mobile browsers could understand the media=handheld.

Until that day comes, around 2010 or so, the best bet is either WAP or cHTML (also known as i-mode, an HTML 3.2 subset). That's what we use at OSNews.com too and we achieve 99% compatibility with mobile, text mode and old browsers.

[SteveHoward999]

I am sorry, but CSS only works in a handful of mobile browers only. And half of them don't "agree" to render CSS the same way.

You can use all sorts of methods to test what browser and platform is being used and present content accordingly. You can use different CSS stylesheets according to what you find if you like - or build your CSS so it fails to something that looks and works fine where it is not fully supported. CSS can easily be designed to fail in a friendly manner.

It's called separating content from design and is a basic concept that all programmers and web builders should be familiar with because it saves oodles of time and maintenance in the long run.

[Eugenia]

Here's the thing: I do exactly the same at osnews. We autodetect over 50 mobile/text browsers/platforms and we serve it a different layout. Automatically.

And I do this with just one version of cHTML (plus our WAP-only version of course, for even less capable phones).

With CSS, which is so unpredictable in terms of compatibility, you will need at least 10 different CSS layouts/code. And you will STILL only work correctly on only 40% of the mobile browsers, because the rest 60% doesn't support CSS at all.

And also don't forget: CSS takes DOUBLE THE CPU time to render than plain HTML does. And when you are dealing with phones running at 50 Mhz or even 33 Mhz, then you realize how IMPORTANT running on simple HTML is.

Please don't try to debunk this issue from the "web developer's point of view" cause I have actually DEVELOPED and STUDIED everything there is about mobile browsers. OSNews.com is among the 3-4 sites out there which do automatic detection without using WURFL or CSS.

Also, my husband is a mobile-browser architect at Openwave.com (they have 52% of the mobile phone browser market) and while their new versions of the browser support CSS, plain cHTML is still their preferred method of rendering web sites simply because of CPU and memory restrictions. While us, geeks, love to talk about PocketPCs with 128 MBs of memory and 400 Mhz CPUs, "real" people (more than a billion of them) still run on 128x128 phones at 33 Mhz and 600 KBs of RAM.

[Mark Kenepp]

my husband blogged about .mobi a few months ago, and I think he had a point when he wrote that typing "mobi" on a numeric keypad is a pain in the butt: (10 key-presses! ;-)
http://jbq.livejournal.com/78522.html

If that was .wap, it would have been much-much better IMHO.

I second that that is a good point!

.mobi isn't even mobile friendly!

[Jason Dunn]

As a content provider / site owner, I have to wonder what's going to happen to those of us who own one of the other TLD's. I mean, imagine if you own CNN, and someone comes along and registers CNN.mobi and it's for some legitimate site of some kind... You're going to see a string of domain hijacking and cybersquatting on the lines of which you've never seen in your life.

Bing! That's going to be a HUGE problem - so here's how this is going to play out:

1) Many sites will try to get .mobi, but not all will. Some will get squatted on
2) Those that don't will likely still want to implement some sort of mobile device version of their site eventually (this is looking 5+ years down the road)
3) Those that didn't get .mobi aren't going to just give up and not support mobile devices, so they'll support mobile devices with their own code (like we do now)

About the ONLY way to avoid this would be to automatically give first crack at the .mobi to the owner of the .com...what about about the .net and .org users? No easy answers there.

Overall I think .mobi is a poor idea.

[Eugenia]

It gets even better. What if both MyDomain.org or .net and the MyDomain.com want the same .mobi URL? :)

[Paragon]

I think .mobi is a very bad idea. We have enough problems with the amount of sites that don't render well on mobile devices now. It is getting much better all the time, but I think .mobi just draws a line in the sand. There are still going to be lots of sites that aren't going to go to .mobi, and will not develop their sites for mobile devices. The answer to better web access is not creating a new domain for mobile access but to continue developing better mobile hardware and browser technology. .mobi will only slow that process down, I think.

Dave

[SteveHoward999]

OK but it sounds like you are being (admirably) obsessive about getting your design onto every browser. As I already said, CSS is desigend to fail gracefully, so it is possible to build sites that work everywhere using CSS, provided you are willing to accept that not all browsers are going to present the complete design as originally intended.

Incidentally, I checkout out your site on my PocketPC and it suffers from my biggest pet hate when viewing content on a Pocket PC. You have your links menu at the top of the page, so every time I hit a new page I have to scroll down until I locate the content. Maybe that's deliberare design, but if it is it's a pain, IMHO. When browsing with the PDA, I tend to avoid sites that are so unfriendly.

[Eugenia]

>provided you are willing to accept that not all browsers are going to present the complete design

So why bother at all then? I would be ok with this only if my content would not be viewable on about 20% of the mobile browsers. But when you are only going to render on 20% of them (or maybe less), then it's a useless effort IMHO. As I said, there will be a time (in 4-5 years from now) where all phones will have good CSS support and that by then it will be a good idea to use CSS instead of cHTML (I even plan to rewrite the osnews mobile code in CSS by then). It's just that the CSS time hasn't come yet for mobile browsers. What I am arguing here is simply a reality check.

>You have your links menu at the top of the page, so every time I hit a new page I have to scroll down

HUH?
The links menu is about 25 pixels thick! You DON'T have to scroll to start reading. Here is my proof on a QVGA screen (using a Zaurus here, but it's the same on PIE): http://mobits.com/images/portfolio1.png
And also, don't forget the poor phone users on their 128x128 screens. When they start using the site, they must be presented with the menu, and also, after you read the page and you are now all the way down, the menu re-appears on the bottom. Having the menu on both the top and the bottom is one of the most important usability points when creating a page for phones.

>When browsing with the PDA, I tend to avoid sites that are so unfriendly.

You know, OSNews' mobile pages are some of the most friendly mobile pages out there. Instead of actually be a white page with some links in it (like most "mobile" sites look like), it actually has a design. And it works! I am proud of osnews' mobile pages, because it is possibly the only web site out there that has such a compatibility rate, without using WURFL. I research the user agents all by myself and within a year I had a faster solution than WURFL. Which is exactly what led me and a friend to start a company about it and license our solution (the autodetection part).

[R K]

http://mobits.com/images/portfolio1.png
Instead of actually be a white page with some links in it (like most "mobile" sites look like), it actually has a design. And it works! I am proud of osnews' mobile pages, because it is possibly the only web site out there that has such a compatibility rate, without using WURFL.
Wow, that's impressive.
I'm actually going to start visiting OSNews now.

[SteveHoward999]

So why bother at all then?


That's your choice. But the page will still be viable on everything if you use CSS ... and usable.

>You have your links menu at the top of the page, so every time I hit a new page I have to scroll down

HUH?
The links menu is about 25 pixels thick! You DON'T have to scroll to start reading. Here is my proof on a QVGA screen (using a Zaurus here, but it's the same on PIE): http://mobits.com/images/portfolio1.png



Well - there's your proof of how you expect it to work. With your logo and all that menu stuff, two thirds of the screen is used up. Obviously you are happy with that, but I would not be.

But here's the rub. Wanna see what I see on my VGA E830 without making any changes to the settings I use every day?

http://www.tomorrows-key.com/stuff/OSNews.gif

So you can see why I was ticked off.

I checked the page out on my E750, which runs WM 2003. On that, your page looks like your screen shot.

On my E830, running in SE_VGA mode, using PocketIE Plus, your menu is always at the top as shown when I use Pocket View. When I use Standard View, none of the default PocketIE views gives a view like you showed - Default and Desktop have the menu at the side (fine) and One Column goes back to an unsatisfactory long menu ant the top of the page.

And also, don't forget the poor phone users on their 128x128 screens. When they start using the site, they must be presented with the menu, and also, after you read the page and you are now all the way down, the menu re-appears on the bottom. Having the menu on both the top and the bottom is one of the most important usability points when creating a page for phones.


For phones, yep. But as you can see, I am not using a phone. I hope the menu is more friendly for phones than either your or my PDA shots ...



>When browsing with the PDA, I tend to avoid sites that are so unfriendly.

You know, OSNews' mobile pages are some of the most friendly mobile pages out there.

Maybe so, but that doesn't make me have fewer gripes with it.


Instead of actually be a white page with some links in it (like most "mobile" sites look like), it actually has a design. And it works! I am proud of osnews' mobile pages, because it is possibly the only web site out there that has such a compatibility rate, without using WURFL. I research the user agents all by myself and within a year I had a faster solution than WURFL. Which is exactly what led me and a friend to start a company about it and license our solution (the autodetection part).

You have every right to be proud, and I am not criticising your effort or your energy. Clearly you and I have different ideas of usability, and I would suggest your detection part is not foolproof.

[Eugenia]

Steve, the screenshot you got there is NOT normal. You are getting the NON-mobile page of osnews (which of course would look bad on a PDA). PocketIEPlus obviously does NOT use a standard user agent, OR, you have TWEAKED its user agent (which is a very bad thing for proper autodetection).
Please go to this URL www.osnews.com/ua.php wtih your PPC and copy/paste for me what you get there, and so I can investigage what's going on!

[R K]

So you can see why I was ticked off.

It looks like you're getting the desktop version of OSNews with your screenshot on the E830. Are you sure PIE Plus isn't fooling the website into thinking that it's IE5.5?

***quote trimmed by mod JD***

[Eugenia]

AHA!!!

I just downloaded and installed PIEPlus on my x50v. The DEFAULT user agent of PIEPlus is the same as Pocket IE's. OSNews works _perfectly_ with it and recognizes it as a mobile browser!

But you have obviously tweaked its settings to identify as either IE 5.5 or 6.0. I just did so, and indeed, when you change the user agent, you can't get the mobile version anymore. This is the correct behavior. Both the browser and the site work as intended when you do that. But of course, as a mobile user, you don't always want to do that. You should only use the modified user agent for (bad) sites that don't allow you to go through with an action if you are not a desktop IE. But don't use that for normal browsing!

[R K]

AHA!!!
Now that is some quick tech support!

[Gerard]

Steve; what did you use to either capture or post-process that e830 screenshot? Was it PQV perchance? Whatever it was, it crashes my WM2003SE e800 in Pockett IE every time I try to load this thread page with images turned on. Talk about browser un-friendly!

In my experience of PPC-based image editing/capture software, only GIF files saved using Pocket Quick View (PQV, by Larry Bank, no longer in development for well over two years) causes PIE to fail with spontaneous closings. Larry never addressed the problem. I had taken many screenshots of several devices using PQV, had uploaded them to my server and used them in many forums... so I had a bit of a job of re-saving to do (used Pocket XnView which does a lovely job) once I isolated the source of the problem. Could you re-save that GIF using something other than what you did, anad re-upload it? I'm curious about how osnews is formatting in your device. Looks good on my e800.

[Jason Dunn]

I just downloaded and installed PIEPlus on my x50v. The DEFAULT user agent of PIEPlus is the same as Pocket IE's. OSNews works _perfectly_ with it and recognizes it as a mobile browser! But you have obviously tweaked its settings to identify as either IE 5.5 or 6.0.

I have to chime in here and agree with Eugenia - as Web site owners, we can work hard to create optimized layouts for mobile devices, but the second that someone hacks their user agent string to tell a Web server that their mobile device is not really a mobile device, they make it very difficult for us to deliver an optimized experience. I *think* there's a way to do secondary sniffing - I think we implemented that here, where we sniff for the browser type AND the operating system. But it's not ideal, and if people want good mobile experiences on their devices, they should not hack the user agent string.

[SteveHoward999]

Please go to this URL www.osnews.com/ua.php wtih your PPC and copy/paste for me what you get there, and so I can investigage what's going on!

Big menu (header I presume) as usual, then Error Page Not Found, then page footer.


When I change the browser ID from 6 to PIE then it works as you expected. Hmm - obviously my fault there - sorry.

Shame - because changing the browser ID changes how a lot of sites are presented to something ugly ...

[Eugenia]

PocketIE Plus' hacked user agent is not sniffable at all, mobile-wise. When you change it to IE 5.5 or 6, it reports that it runs on Windows XP, not on Windows CE (the osnews autodetection code is based on keywords, so the OS and platform is part of these keywords). As a webmaster, there is no way to get PIEPlus right after it has been tweaked. This is the user's fault. User agent hacking should only be used in extreme cases where some desktop sites don't let you in.

[Eugenia]

>Big menu (header I presume) as usual, then Error Page Not Found, then page footer.

You typed it wrong then (or your browser got it wrong). The ua.php page is there and I tried it with my PIEPlus too. :)
If you changed the user agent back to PIE anyway, you will just get the normal user agent listed there.

[R K]

This is the user's fault. User agent hacking should only be used in extreme cases where some desktop sites don't let you in.
Theoretically, this should be the case but unfortunately, most websites aren't optimized to be mobile friendly so hacking user agents is the only thing a user can do.
Unfortunately, the people who put all the hard work into making great mobile sites are the ones who get the bad end of the deal on this one.

[SteveHoward999]

User agent hacking should only be used in extreme cases where some desktop sites don't let you in.

I disagree. Changing the user agent back and forth is a pain. The internet as a whole becomes more usable if you change the user agent to 6 and leave it there - probably most especially when you have a VGA screen, when there is the screen space to take advantage of the desktop version of many (most) sites.

Ultimately it's down to preference and you know how picky and stubborn many of us are :-)

[Eugenia]

I guess, by making your user agent as desktop one, your choice is to only browse desktop sites. This is your choice. But don't complain that osnews doesn't look that good. ;)

Also, osnews will probably look much better if you enable the "desktop view" instead of the default kind of rendering on your PIE, and if you use landscape. This way, you will have all the stories fit on their 610px table and the desktop view will not break the tables. It'll look better if your choice is to use a desktop user agent.

[SteveHoward999]

I guess, by making your user agent as desktop one, your choice is to only browse desktop sites. This is your choice. But don't complain that osnews doesn't look that good. ;)


I didn't expand upon it, but when I mentioned earlier using the Standard setting in PIE+ with Desktop or Standard views in PIE setings, the page looked fine. The menu displays down the left and the content sits nicely on the right ... one of the views manages to fit it all in the 480x640 window, the other adds horizontal scroll bars. Not sure which ... standard view I think. Yes this is much icer .. "fine" didn't quite say that did it? :-)

Oh - and I almost never use landscape view. I have relatively small hands (for a guy) and don't find using the E830 comfortable in landscape view. The exception is when I watch movies, but then all I have to do is hold it.

[Eugenia]

>Not sure which ... standard view I think.

I was reffering to the IE menu item "Layout" and its "Desktop" option instead of the "Default" or "One Column" (when used with the desktop user agent and in Landscape mode). That whole combination will bring you the best view of the desktop version of osnews on a VGA device. But I understand if you can't use Landscape, it's trickier as it requires two hands.

[SteveHoward999]

Yeah I knew what you meant --- I typed Standard whan I should have typed Default.

&lt;grinning>
Frankly - using VGA PDA for web surfing with PIE+ and the settings I normally use make surfing a joy. I don't mind making adjustments like we have spoken of here (default, standard, pocket view etc) but changing the user agent is a pain as it requires close/relaunch of PIE - hence I leave it as IE6.

Ultimately I'm still rooting for CSS - build once, deploy anywhere. But I know where you are coming from and my needs (and personal preferences) make for different demands on the few occasions I have build web content that needs to be PDA (note PDA, not PDA, phone, fridge etc) friendly too.

In about 4 years time we'll both be using CSS and I can say "I told you so" ;-)

[Eugenia]

No, I told you so! :)
I did say that CSS is a good way to do a mobile site, but not before CSS is mature enough on mobile browsers. Until that day comes, cHTML/WAP is still the way to go.

[drthomasho]

I'm curious to see which domains have attracted bids and how "high" the bids are?