Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

You're gonna hate this suggestion, but return the crackberry and get a treo.

On my 650 with plain old 1xrtt, your blog loads fine. I just need to scroll a little bit to get to the posts. I can also post a comment. With the new 700p (Palm OS) with EvDO, you can work even faster. But, I know you're really talking about a solution for your audience.

Regardless, I use the Palm Quick News RSS reader to quickly scan the blogs. There are also online RSS aggregators that work well with micro browsers. Bloglines has a mobile version, but you can't comment.

There's also winksite.com which converts your blog into something more manageable for a cell phone browser. I've been meaning to try it, but I don't think the user can comment using it--I don't know. BoingBoing.net used to use it.

Here's a series of articles by Authentic Boredom on mobile web design. Haven't read it yet, but looks useful.

http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000398.html

One of their commenters mentions that people with mobile devices don't surf the Web but want to immediately go to the info they want. I tend to agree with this and would recommend the mobile RSS aggregator.

One quick fix is to add a link to the top of the page that says "Skip to content" and links to #start_here.

Then use CSS to hide that link from non-mobile screens.

Not a quick solution, but you could re-structure your HTML to use absolute positioning. That way, you can have your 'main' blog column as the first section (div) on the page, and just use positioning to present it in the middle. Either the blackberry won't understand the positioning, and display it to you first, or you can pretty simply serve up a different CSS style sheet for the mobile device, which positions it first.

It always amazes me a little how somebody who so "digs" that the web is about voice and conversation so fails at understanding the mechanics of voice and conversation. (Or is it that you know about the mechanics, but figure that somebody else is better at figuring them out?)

The right and structural solution to your problem should be plain to see: put the things people want to read first (that which defines the page they're on), first. At least, that is generally the right solution; since we're talking about the homepage here, exceptions may apply.

However, there is probably a reason why you have a host of items "to the left" (whatever that is supposed to mean on the web), and in that case the solutions offered by others should work just as fine. To recap: use a link that leads past the cruft, or put the content first and then use Cascading Style Sheets to display the cruft first in some browsers.

A third solution would be to make a special mobile version of the blog. You have already got special versions for the colorblind, you might as well throw in a mobile version. Just use the same page, but with a different stylesheet, one that positions the mobile content at the top.

I vote for the CSS and Treo solutions too... or ditch the handheld and wait for a useful UMPC.

The problem comes as a result of your site using old-school table-based layout. When linearized, the cells on the left come first, then the center cell, then the right cell. The solution is to move to a CSS-positioning-based template. Dan Z. touched on this with his recommendation to use absolute positioning, but this sort of solution doesn't necessarily use absolute positioning. There are also three-column layouts that use floating and negative margins to accomplish the desired look and feel. The code can then be structured so that the content appears first in the code, then the navigation. In addition to making your site easier to use on mobile devices, it has the benefit of being easier to use by blind and visually impaired users with screen readers.

The Skip Navigation link mentioned by Adam is also a good idea, and might suffice as a quick fix.

Branko, I find your comment narrow-minded. There are millions of interesting things to know in the world and no-one can know them all. Why on earth should someone have to know the nitty gritty of how the internet actually works and the mechanics of CSS in order to write about the internet. An understanding of the principles is important, but not the mechanics.

Sort of related. This was in today's Wall Street Journal. It may be sub only. I'm sort of out of it, and don't have any mobile devices, so this was new to me.

.mobi

"Currently, few Web pages are designed to be accessed via mobile devices. Many sites can't be displayed on tiny cellphone screens, and most would take a much longer time to download than on a PC.

Mobile Top Level Domain aims to change that in part by setting up a new domain name specifically for wireless Internet Web sites called dot-mobi. Just as dot-com is the domain name for many Web pages on the wired Internet, dot-mobi will become the suffix for Web pages that are formatted for cellphones and other wireless devices, the company says. Mobile Top Level Domain Chief Executive Officer Neil Edwards says the union of the Web and cellphones has so far been "a bad experience" that consumers and the mobile industry have failed to embrace. "Dot-mobi makes the Internet work on phones," says Mr. Edwards."

Donna, you're right. I was just surprised, 's all.

"Currently, few Web pages are designed to be accessed via mobile devices."

The scary bit is that HTML is inherently accessible, it takes effort to create a less accessible web page.

I took Adam's suggestion and put in a link to skip to the posts. The link is hidden if your screen is greater than 200.

I then spent several happy hours hiding the first column if your screen is under 200. I got it showing and hiding the column on my desktop machine, but the same code when run on my Blackberry didn't work, so I can only assume that the Blackberry's browser doesn't like my code (well, the code I found and adapted) nearly as much as Firefox did.

So, I've left it with just the link to skip to the posts.

Ah, so much more fun than working on my book :) Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll keep at it.

Ah, what a shift as we see our own world through a different lens. Might be a great idea for you to put your "issue" into a graduate class in communication design as a case study and see what research opens up with new ways to design a mobile port for MetaFilter.

Ah, what a shift as we see our own world through a different lens. Might be a great idea for you to put your "issue" into a graduate class in communication design as a case study and see what research opens up with new ways to design a mobile port with a great meta-filter taht would deliver what users really want.

Why not try Google's mobile proxy? m.google.com. I'm using it right now and the Joho blog looks fine on my Palm TX.

You should try out http://nextblast.com to mobilize all of your content as produced by your blog server without modifying your site. Your posts and all multimedia are adapted on the fly to the multitudes of mobile phone types. This allows your fans to read your writings on the web or mobile including message delivery. The Joho blog works very nicely for the majority of the mobile phones instead of just targeting a single device or a single display size.

You can also create your own personal mobile site within a few minutes to make available to your readers. You can even make is a c-name off of your existing site name. The mobile site automatically adapts the original blog writing to the reader's mobile phone and operator without you needing to do more work.

I'm not sure, do you think once the dotMobi top level domain is up and working, the dotMobi sites could fit easily on the Blackberry? Just guessing

More info on dotMobi can be had from Mobinomy.com @ http://www.mobinomy.com . The site also plans to start a dotMobi only directory soon

Hope this helps

Ec from Linens Online @ http://www.linens.in

I'm not sure, do you think once the dotMobi top level domain is up and working, the dotMobi sites could fit easily on the Blackberry? Just guessing

More info on dotMobi can be had from Mobinomy.com @ http://www.mobinomy.com . The site also plans to start a dotMobi only directory soon

Hope this helps

Ec from Linens Online @ http://www.linens.in