Considering the importance of the Internet to modern life, accessing the Web using mobile phones would seem a likely and inevitable step forward for the technologically minded.
However, to date there have been some significant hurdles for online services in attracting users to get off their PCs and log onto Web sites on the move.
The second major obstacle relates to the experience of the Web on a phone. In fact, before Apple released the iPhone you would have been hard pressed to find anyone who was particularly enthusiastic about accessing their favorite sites from their handset. Where the iPhone excels is with the built-in Safari browser offering a near to desktop PC experience of the Web, with the multi-touch interface improving users ability to scan over sites with ease.
Full size Web sites exacerbate things; they are cumbersome to view on tiny screens and existing browsers often have difficulty rendering these pages properly. In most cases data is charged by the kilobyte, too, and so viewing standard sites can end up being very expensive.
Mobile sites offer a much needed solution. Designed to be viewed on mobile devices, they are typically pared down versions of the original, removing most images and active elements like Web extensions and animations. These adjustments mean around ten to twenty times less data per page than a standard site, improving performance and lowering data cost when using a mobile device.
Best of all, the quality of mobile sites is constantly improving. Read on for a list of our favorite tiny sites.
(This article was originally published on CNET.com.au; Picture credit: Sony Ericsson)
