Do we actually need to ‘develop’ for mobile devices anymore?
The launch of the new iPhone this month made me think about the need to design for mobile browsers.
Since the introduction of Apple’s first iPhone, and companies like Google with their Android platform it has become possible to forget about the “mobile version” (formats like WAP) and just design for HTML instead. Is this really the case though? What else do we need to consider?
The likes of google, ebay, facebook, etc. have mobile-specific sites which are designed and developed with the small screen in mind with more rapid loading time, and a more compact interface. However mobile devices can support all the usual elements of a standard HTML site, headers, p tags, lists and images but when we move into the realms of Flash and Java then the problems begin.
With this in mind how can a site that has Flash, Java still be accessible? The answer might have just been revealed – the new iPhone 3.0 OS firmware works on all current hardware and supports HTML5 – as will the next Palm Pre update and Android firmware.
The new version of HTML (HTML 5) allows for new ways to tween page elements potentially making Flash redundant for the more basic functions. Little additions like this just help to improve user experience and don’t require a massive amount of work.
There is a good reason why Apple pushes these new features of the HTML standard – and a good reason why all the other big browser manufacturers are getting on board with HTML5. The reason is that we can do it all in HTML+CSS now – we just don’t *need* Flash anymore - and all the issues which follow. We can deliver rich content using nothing more than the browser itself.
Developing for these pocket-internet devices is becoming less of a chore these days and eventually it may even be the case that we design a site once and it will work on anything, PC and mobile devices alike.