The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued the first version of their recommended mobile web best practices. This document is meant to help developers agree on the basic principles of designing a page for mobile devices. This is the first step toward providing a baseline for web developers and mobile browsers to create better and more consistent mobile web experiences for users.
Many of these guidelines seem like good common sense, which I think is often the mark of a well-written standard. However, it can be hard to keep 60 or so separate guidelines in mind while coding an application. Some recommendations, like keeping your url names short and making sure that your content is easily reached, topical and concise are music to users’ ears. While these standards are aimed at creating pages for the lowest common denominator of browsers, I’m not sure that it will close the gap on developers who are creating web applications specifically for iPhone users.
Other tools for the mobile web from the W3C include their beta mobilewebOK checker to see if your site is mobile-friendly and a mobile browser test. It’s nice to see that the mobile web working group has successfully collaborated to provide the initial framework necessary for the mobile web to flourish.
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I'm Dave and I like to share news about gadgets, gear, careers and design for a mobile world.
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