Bye-bye handheld stylesheets?
First Safari mobile on the iPhone, now Opera Mini 4, it would seem that the trend for mobile browsers is to pretend they’re a Desktop, and to persuade sites not to dumb down the presentation enabling the browser to wow us with zooming etc. they’re ignoring handheld stylesheets. However, new CSS3 features like media queries which allow different stylesheets to be included based on for example screen size.
As discussed on Unintentionally Blank a few weeks back, the reasoning seems to be to save the users from the developers who apparently all want to dish up ‘dumbed down’ sites for mobile devices.
But surely we all agree that mobile devices are not desktop devices - you use them in different contexts and have different requirements. Whilst I appreciate that not all mobile users want a dumbed down site, let’s have choice rather than imposition. And taking away tools that can have a positive benefit if used properly is removing choice.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the link. The only thing I don’t understand about removing handheld style sheets is the inclusion of media queries, where you are able to do exactly the same as a handheld style sheet.
Of course, there are plenty of views about what people use mobile browsers for, whether they want the full web, want the content but in a mobile friendly manner or want mobile targeted sites. Of course, if you are targeting a site specifically for mobile, you shouldn’t need to be dumbing it down from the desktop version as it should be designed for mobile in the first place.
I don’t know how typical my use is, but as soon as I got Opera Mini 4, I stopped using the Facebook mobile site with preference for the real thing. Then again, perhaps I would appreciate it if the Facebook site could shrink itself to one column on the small screen, using media queries, rather than have me pan across the screen and zoom in and out.
In the end it is swings and roundabouts, but, as you conclude, I do think the choice should be given to developers as well as end users.
Comment by Phil — December 10, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
Phil,
I’m having an interesting debate offline at work with a colleague who’s of the opinion that there should not only be ‘one web’ but ‘one site’ and leave it to the device to display it appropriately. He’s a CSS developer and thinks he can do it all in stylesheets.
I’m more of a server-side guy, and although I don’t propose having completely different sites for different classes of device (I’m currently afraid there need to be three - desktop, iPhone and xhtml-mp) I believe that with a subtle bit of browser sniffing and switching key bits of templates, you can adapt the html delivered to the device to suit capabilities and user experience.
My understanding of W3C MWI Best Practice is that’s what they suggest.
The questions then are - how much do you adapt a site, how do you do it, how can you keep maintenance overhead under control, and how can you ensure the user to gets a site they want / expect?
I don’t have an answer to those questions yet as we haven’t worked through the implications, but when we do I hope to publish our conclusions.
Comment by jaydublu — December 11, 2007 @ 10:26 am