Web Browser?

Jose Manrique Lopez de la Fuente jsmanrique at gmail.com
Mon Apr 7 13:47:27 CEST 2008


2008/4/7, Tilman Baumann <tilman at baumann.name>:
>  My opinion is just the opposite. There where many attempts to create
> something like a mobile web. And all failed miserably. (wap, imode, crappy
> limited browsers)

Yes, that's the reason for "One Web"[1]:
One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information
and services available to users irrespective of the device they are
using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is
available in exactly the same representation across all devices. The
context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues
and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation.
Furthermore, some services and information are more suitable for and
targeted at particular user contexts

>  I think it is time to stop making futile attempts to change the web and
> begin to change mobile browsers and how they are used. The iPhone browser is
> a good example and by far not the only one.
>  Since mobile browsers take the web as it is, they suddenly became cool.

I am not sure about that:
- A handheld device won't be bigger than my hand, so text and images
usually get resized to very small fonts, not readable, so I need to do
zoom in specific zones. And when I don't know the site, I need to move
right/left/down/up all the time. Not very usable after all.
- A handheld device doesn't have (and won't have) my deskotp device
horsepower... Maybe it supports complex JavaScript, but then intense
javascript webpages will take too much to load, i.e. And what about
flash?
- A handheld device hasn't got a mouse, It uses other pointer
resources.. just think about "those cool" mouse events available for
"desktop versions"

>  Neo has enough horsepower and pixels to provide a decent web experience.
>  I have tested the built in browser (with usb net not GPRS) and it works
> just fine. Stable layout, wonderful text rendering courtesy of the extremely
> high dpi of the screen.

Yes, nice hardware. But as I said before, I think this device should
be included in "mobile browsers" databases to let content adaptions
server switch to an optimized version of the site if the user request
it.

>  It just needs some usability tweaks. Like scrolling without the scrollbars.
>  Like Opera does (not opera mini) on the Nokia N770 and successors. Which
> are by the way a good example for a really good mobile browsing experience.
> They have a larger screen, but not much more pixels than we.

 On my Maemo devices I usually use 'mobile' versions of some websites
because they provide better user experience (it loads faster i. e.
compare how much take to load google reader)

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#OneWeb

-- 
J. Manrique López de la Fuente
http://www.jsmanrique.es




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