Your opinion about .mobi sites — S60 (Series 60) — All About Symbian Forum Archive

Hi folks,

I was viewing your discussions in some of these forums, very interesting & useful....

I also thought I'd check with you guys whether you have tried viewing from mobiles the newly launched .mobi sites - that is, sites adapted for viewing on mobiles...

I co-ordinate a .mobi directory of sites @ Mobinomy, and am currently collecting views and opinions from mobile forums such as these for users' experience of .mobi sites (for reference, you can find a good list of .mobi sites at Mobinomy...)...I'm specifically interested in the ease of navigation and information collection while using .mobi sites from a mobile phone, as well as any other inputs you might feel are relevant in this regard, possibly from different mobile handsets such as Nokia, Samsung, LG, SE, Motorola etc...I hope to publish these results soon at the site.

Well, since this is a symbian forum, I am keen on getting inputs in this regard from Symbian, but comments from non-symbians are welcome as well...

It'll be good if members could post their opinions in this post, or aletrnatively, I'd request your views to be sent to me ( info at mobinomy dot com)...many thanks for your patience, and I hope this note is not a bother

I look fwd to your inputs, have a nice day

NS @ Mobinomy - for the mobile economy

I'm not sure what discussions you were viewing and found interesting & useful, or whether you actually are honestly looking for information/opinions, or only advertising your site but trying to make it seem as if you aren't?

Anyhow, I will give you my opinion:

Personally, I stopped looking for and bookmarking specific "mobile" sites since phones got browsers that are good enough for most sites (excluding those badly designed sites where the main content is Flash, a Java applet or even an ActiveX control).

Mainly I've done that because most mobile sites have a subset or old information of the "real" site, and thus they're mainly useless or at least out-of-date.

Secondly it is, because I've learned my way around the sites I usually go to, and getting the same navigation structure on the mobile with today's browsers helps finding things.

Third, because most sites do not have any kind of special mobile versions anyway.

Fourth, because there's no uniformity in how a mobile version of the site is found (or vice versa). Some have a link on the page. Others have site.com/mobile URL. Then there are those with mobile.site.com as the URL. Some don't use "mobile", but use "palm" or PDA" or something that doesn't mean/indicate anything. And now to add to the confusion, there's also .mobi.

Fifth, because many sites are so well designed that no special mobile version is needed at all (especially with fast 3G access or even Wi-Fi/WLAN on many models).

And I particularly dislike .mobi, because if I really want to go to interestingsite.org, and would expect the "mobile" version to be "interestingsite.mobi", but in reality the owner of "interestingsite.com" (in which I have no interest) has actually registered "interestingsite.mobi".

So, instead of getting the mobile content of "interestingsite.org", I'd get the "mobile" content of "interestingsite.com", which I do not care for at all.

The ideal would, of course, be sites that were designed to work on any size of display, and not depend on technologies that limit access, prevent access, or confuse users with different devices. It can be done, and many do. Fortunately.

So, from a Symbian (and S60 3rd Edition) device user point of view, I don't care for .mobi, because it doesn't really give me anything I want.

Others have other opinions, I'm sure.