Building a Mobile Version of Your Website

Here's the skinny for mobile and other hand-held (non-laptop) devices.
Most websites will display fine in mobile or smaller screens. In other words they will at least appear in the screen, but not necessarily easy to use, read or navigate.

The more bells and whistles you have in your web like fly out menus, animation, drop down menus, Java Script and other effects may not work on different mobile operating systems.

As of this writing the most popular mobile operating systems are running on iPhone, Black Berry and Android.

So let's say you want to develop a mobile version of your web site.
A mobile web page or web sites are stripped down versions of the main website displaying it's most important links or content with no fancy drop downs or other eye candy. effects.

Some time ago we decided to experiment with a mobile version of our website.
http://visionefx.net/mobile/index-m.html. (You can also use the Media CSS command to display 2 versions of a single web page; one for large screen and one for mobile).

First we loaded a 'mobile detection script' on the home page of our main website. Then we tested the page on several hand-held devices and tablets to include Android, Black Berry, iPhone and *iPad. All these devices served up and displayed the mobile version of our website.

*iPad - Most 'standard' websites display well in tablets.

Next we tested viewing the website over the new Black Berry PlayBook, Motorola Zoom and the middle sized Galaxy Tab. (The latter two run Android OS).

All these touch pads use the same OS as their smaller counter parts hence these tablets are serving up the stripped down site mobile website. This means that owners of these devices are seeing a mobile version of the website when the display of a standard website would look just fine.

Unless there is a compelling reason to create a mobile website then it is best to wait OR develop your website inside a CMS or Content Management System having modules that support management of multiple hand-held and tablet devices.

As technology moves forward at a break neck pace, there are bound to be even MORE new viewing devices we will all have to deal with.

About the Author
Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United States. Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net.