I think it is absurd that Nokia and Apple haven’t implemented the support for handheld mediatype in their browsers. It would make everyone’s life so much easier helping the developers and users both. Fortunately Nokia has give people the opportunity to have their “say in the future development of the S60 platform”:http://www.s60.com/business/productinfo/wishlist/displayWishDetails.do?wishId=1021&activeCat=10. I even think that Nokia is subconsciously admitting that it might have been a mistake not to support the handheld media as “discussed on the Boagworld forum”:http://boagworld.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2572&page=1#Item_5. Of course I might just be imagining.
Another thing what I don’t understand is the fuzz about iPhone. Of course it is sexy and cool and every geek must have a one but as mentioned before it’s sales are only a needle in a haystack. The one thing that I consider important in the whole iPhone phenomenon is that it brings more attention on the whole mobile web issue and even main stream users will eventually understand that they have the Internet in their pockets.
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Philip Howard
I would have prefered an article on the growth of Opera Mini and to a lesser extent Opera Mobile. There is a far wider user base out there. I’m a new student to all this but if i was to adapt a site i’d be optimizing it for Opera Mini.
“Opera Mini Market share”:http://operawatch.com/news/2007/09/opera-minis-growth-over-the-past-5-months-027-of-total-market-share.html
Thank you so much for including the numbers about how many mobile devices Apple is selling. This great post (and the one on “Switchy McLayout”) have helped me to decide on building sites to accommodate screens that are under 640px.
I can’t wait to test these ideas out on my Boss iPhone. (That line about her buying ME one back fired…)
The first question in my mind, how to build my website to really accommodate little devices like iPhone and others? It’s like “extensibility” question on the web?
At last time, I am testing one version of my website which is extensible, but I suppose that isn’t enough or satisfying. I see as the Safari browser implements tools to improve for displaying media (image for example). It’s very interesting.
But a subject of your article makes me being attentive : “the <meta> tag with the viewport information” !
I would like to learn more about that.
Can you really explain me how is it used?
One of the main limitations I’ve noticed with the iPhone concerns scrollable divs within the page. For example “wide comic strips”:http://matthewjamestaylor.com/comics/ogga-cyclone are no longer scrollable even though they still work on the full Safari.
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Jared Stein
Hm, we’ve been spent some long hours XSLT’ing our XML-based Flash flashcards for web browsers, and lo and behold, guess what’s on iPhone Safari’s list of unsupported technologies?
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Jared Stein
Hm, we’ve been spent some long hours XSLT’ing our XML-based Flash flashcards for web browsers, and lo and behold, guess what’s on iPhone Safari’s list of unsupported technologies?
Love the great feature of the iphone. It has the futuristic look and it works great. Looking to get my hands on this phone coming feb 2008! Iphone rocks!
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Bret Lanius
I’ve been fighting this issue for days and the Quicktime tags just don’t work…
I had it working somewhat but ONLY if the poster image was a full path to it and the video was NOT full path AND in the same folder. I am using the embed tags exactly as described in Apples site and here.
First of all thank you for posting such a great and easy to understand info.
Some links however are broken (do not need .html part):
http://www.css3.info/preview/rounded-border.html
should be
http://www.css3.info/preview/rounded-border/
Same goes for http://www.css3.info/preview/border-image.html
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Paul Gustafson
This is a great article, but I would like a little more info on the section where you talk about adding video to an iphone optimized site. Do you have any resources for doing this?
I’m wondering how the hcard code handles International calls where numbers need to be omitted or added to dial out of the country and into another.
For example, the standard for displaying a French phone number with country code is: “33 (0)4 68 71 31 58” and you assume that an International caller knows to ignore the Zero in parentheses. Does the hcard have similar ignore if international protocol?
You mentioned using css to load lower res images for the iPhone, did you mean using css background images, or some other technique? Css background images are not really appropriate in a lot of cases as they don’t have alt tags.
46 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticlePirkka Rannikko
I think it is absurd that Nokia and Apple haven’t implemented the support for handheld mediatype in their browsers. It would make everyone’s life so much easier helping the developers and users both. Fortunately Nokia has give people the opportunity to have their “say in the future development of the S60 platform”:http://www.s60.com/business/productinfo/wishlist/displayWishDetails.do?wishId=1021&activeCat=10. I even think that Nokia is subconsciously admitting that it might have been a mistake not to support the handheld media as “discussed on the Boagworld forum”:http://boagworld.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2572&page=1#Item_5. Of course I might just be imagining.
Another thing what I don’t understand is the fuzz about iPhone. Of course it is sexy and cool and every geek must have a one but as mentioned before it’s sales are only a needle in a haystack. The one thing that I consider important in the whole iPhone phenomenon is that it brings more attention on the whole mobile web issue and even main stream users will eventually understand that they have the Internet in their pockets.
Nemanja Cosovic
How do you detect an iPhone that access the site?
Philip Howard
I would have prefered an article on the growth of Opera Mini and to a lesser extent Opera Mobile. There is a far wider user base out there. I’m a new student to all this but if i was to adapt a site i’d be optimizing it for Opera Mini.
“Opera Mini Market share”:http://operawatch.com/news/2007/09/opera-minis-growth-over-the-past-5-months-027-of-total-market-share.html
David Pennington
Thank you so much for including the numbers about how many mobile devices Apple is selling. This great post (and the one on “Switchy McLayout”) have helped me to decide on building sites to accommodate screens that are under 640px.
I can’t wait to test these ideas out on my Boss iPhone. (That line about her buying ME one back fired…)
Laura PLEXI
The first question in my mind, how to build my website to really accommodate little devices like iPhone and others? It’s like “extensibility” question on the web?
At last time, I am testing one version of my website which is extensible, but I suppose that isn’t enough or satisfying. I see as the Safari browser implements tools to improve for displaying media (image for example). It’s very interesting.
But a subject of your article makes me being attentive : “the <meta> tag with the viewport information” !
I would like to learn more about that.
Can you really explain me how is it used?
Thank you for your answer.
Paveo Chen
I own a iPhone now, thanks for the post of iPhone’s HTML and CSS capabilities.
Matthew Taylor
One of the main limitations I’ve noticed with the iPhone concerns scrollable divs within the page. For example “wide comic strips”:http://matthewjamestaylor.com/comics/ogga-cyclone are no longer scrollable even though they still work on the full Safari.
Tommy Bekri
I imported mine as i live in Germany and it isnt out here yet, a wonderful peace of hardware..
Jared Stein
Hm, we’ve been spent some long hours XSLT’ing our XML-based Flash flashcards for web browsers, and lo and behold, guess what’s on iPhone Safari’s list of unsupported technologies?
Here’s the full list, from the iPhone Dev Center:
Safari on iPhone does not support:
* window.showModalDialog() or window.print()
* Mouse-over events
* Hover styles
* Tool tips
* Java applets
* Flash
* SVG
* XSLT
* Plug-in installation
* Custom x.509 certificates
* WML
* File uploads and downloads
Jared Stein
Hm, we’ve been spent some long hours XSLT’ing our XML-based Flash flashcards for web browsers, and lo and behold, guess what’s on iPhone Safari’s list of unsupported technologies?
Here’s the full list, from the iPhone Dev Center:
Safari on iPhone does not support:
* window.showModalDialog() or window.print()
* Mouse-over events
* Hover styles
* Tool tips
* Java applets
* Flash
* SVG
* XSLT
* Plug-in installation
* Custom x.509 certificates
* WML
* File uploads and downloads
Thomas Burt
Love the great feature of the iphone. It has the futuristic look and it works great. Looking to get my hands on this phone coming feb 2008! Iphone rocks!
Bret Lanius
I’ve been fighting this issue for days and the Quicktime tags just don’t work…
I had it working somewhat but ONLY if the poster image was a full path to it and the video was NOT full path AND in the same folder. I am using the embed tags exactly as described in Apples site and here.
Saf Ernest
Hello!
First of all thank you for posting such a great and easy to understand info.
Some links however are broken (do not need .html part):
http://www.css3.info/preview/rounded-border.html
should be
http://www.css3.info/preview/rounded-border/
Same goes for http://www.css3.info/preview/border-image.html
Regards! Saf
Paul Gustafson
This is a great article, but I would like a little more info on the section where you talk about adding video to an iphone optimized site. Do you have any resources for doing this?
Thanks, great article!
Ryan O'Connell
I’m wondering how the hcard code handles International calls where numbers need to be omitted or added to dial out of the country and into another.
For example, the standard for displaying a French phone number with country code is: “33 (0)4 68 71 31 58” and you assume that an International caller knows to ignore the Zero in parentheses. Does the hcard have similar ignore if international protocol?
seanmullins
You mentioned using css to load lower res images for the iPhone, did you mean using css background images, or some other technique? Css background images are not really appropriate in a lot of cases as they don’t have alt tags.