The Mobile Web

Internet, Mobile, Product Design, Web — Rebecca Cottrell on April 30, 2008 at 8:47 pm

Tim Berners-Lee says the web is in its infancy. We have only just begun to see how the internet is being used to overcome distance, share information, and connect people together. The future web, Sir Tim says, will put “all the data in the world” at the fingertips of every user.

Whilst desktop and laptop computers have defined how we experience the web, I believe that the benefit of the web is best when you can use it anywhere. McGuire’s law is that the value of any product or service increases with its mobility.

So, the mobile web…

Mowser

In many ways, I think Mowser was a great idea. I also think that in many ways, Mowser missed the point. This is aknowledged by its creator, Russell Beattie, in his leaving letter, which was widely and wildly misinterpreted after it was published. Beattie’s leaving note, far from being doctor’s autopsy notes for the mobile web, is actually full of vision and hope for what the mobile web should be like.

In a way, it heralds the death of a certain kind of aenemic mobile web, and one we didn’t want in the first place. Mowser’s failure, although sad, should help to guide others working in the shaping the future of the mobile web:

I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time. […]

Let’s face it, you really aren’t going to spend any real time or effort browsing the web on your mobile phone unless you’re using Opera Mini, or have a smart phone with a decent browser […].

Mowser depended on stripping down the web to make its content accessible to devices with primeval browsers. It’s a good thing that users are not happy with this kind of bloodless web. It’s definitely not good enough. Instead of working to strip the web down to work on limited, boring, terrible browsers, we should work to make devices better, and we should work to make browsers better:
What’s going to drive that traffic eventually? Better devices and full-browsers.

The future of the mobile web depends on giving people a great time while they’re using it. M-Metrics recently revealed that 85% of US iPhone owners use the web, vs 58% of smart phone users. Only 13% of the market as a whole used the web.


It’s not the mobile web, it’s the web…?

The mobile web should exist as a term. But it should not refer to a different web. We can’t deny that how we access and use the “mobile” web is different from how we might use it at home. This does not refer just to the device that the web is viewed on; it refers also to what we use the web for.

We need to make mobile web experiences better. To do this, we need to try and identify how we use the web outside of our homes; and how this is different from how we use the web inside of our homes. E.g., we might not want to do intensive research whilst out shopping; but at home, we might meticulously research and compare reviews for a restaurant.

Despite this, we cannot, and definitely should not, separate the web we view on our laptop from the web we view on our mobile device. Tim Berners-Lee is vehemently opposed to .mobi domain names for this reason:

The Web must operate independently of the hardware, software or network used to access it, of the perceived quality or appropriateness of the information on it, and of the culture, and language, and physical capabilities of those who access it.

Reformatting or splitting the web is not the answer. What we need is what Beattie described in his leaving letter: that is better browsers and better devices. That’s the only way the traffic is going to be there; and the iPhone, despite its scrolling, tapping, and zooming, has shown us what the mobile web should be like. In any case, the experience that the iPhone and iPod touch give us is far from perfect. But it’s far more enjoyable to use than the devices put out by its competitors.

I believe the popularity of the iPhone and the iPod touch has had very little to do with its marketing investment. The iPhone and iPod touch has posed a challenge to its competitors, and the iPhone killer, and not the iPhone catch-up, will be the one that pushes the device and browsing capability further.

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© Rebecca Cottrell 2008