Our world is increasingly mobile, with over 4 billion mobile subscribers in the world at last count. Knowing that, and knowing that the world is only going to get more mobile, is one of the reasons I installed Alex King’s WP-Mobile plugin on this blog a few weeks back. The purpose of that plugin is to give mobile viewers a simplified view of the web pages at Keener Living.
Well, it turns out, according to this article from Google’s VP of Engineering for Mobile and Developer Products, mobile users don’t generally want a simplified view. Some do, of course. But his stats show that most want their mobile browsers to give them the full web experience, complete with all the familiar javascript goodness. Now that I have an iPod Touch, and am thinking about getting an iPhone (AT&T is relaxing its 2-year rule for existing customers), I tend to agree with this view.
Given this interesting tidbit, and given that the subject plugin has caused some technical problems (including double-indexing of some pages by the search engines), I have suspended the plugin. Also, virtually no major blogs use such plugins. TechCrunchIT, for example, the source of the above article, does not appear to use the plugin, nor does its big brother TechCrunch.
For the few of you who are disappointed, my apologies. I think most people will benefit from not having the plugin installed.
I personally like the option of being able to read your site content in a true lightweight mobile view as well as the full content. Maybe have it default to one or the other and then provide a link to switch to the other?
When you are not on an iPhone/G1/WinMo device or have only an EDGE connection, the lightweight sites are very welcome.
I guess mobile users could always reformat your site by using the Google Mobile reformatter:
http://www.google.com/gwt/n
The link for Keener Living would be:
http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.keenerliving.com%2F
(This is the same formatting used by Google Reader Mobile.
Good input, Thomas. Hopefully those who prefer the lightweight style can use the links as you suggested. That turns out being the best approach all the way around.
I do not know of a way to get it to default one way and then have a link to switch to the other. That option is built into the WP Mobile plugin I had been using, but that plugin also appears to cause some other problems (duplicate content with the search engines is one that comes to mind). Also, although the plugin works with WP SuperCache, it forces the latter into the half-on mode, so that it does not provide full caching support.
Anyway, I do appreciate the input. Hopefully going the route of the Google Mobile reformatter works well for those who want the lightweight design. I sure do appreciate you pointing that option out.