Dial Up Users

[fishbum]

The next thing to consider in website building is for mobile users on handheld devices like the iPhone, blackberry or blackjack. Not saying fishin.com necessarily needs to be this way, but checking fishing reports or the latest posts when you're on the road or on the water could be cool.

OK, anyone know how to program for that?
Or where I can learn how?
Or do you just need to make the page smaller..??

[know1]

That's a good question. I'm not an expert, but here's what I've observed.

I've looked at the fishin.com homepage from by blackjack mobile device and it doesn't display well. I think that the forums are probably OK.

Essentially, I think you create an alternate website that is very simple - i.e. you strip out all pictures/graphics (or make them very small) and shorten the text as much as possible. You also make it in a single column. In other words, I do not think it's difficult from a web programming side.

To access the mobile version, you probably create a new URL such as www.fishin.com/m or mobile.fishin.com

Here's a mobile web page that the national weather service has developed:

http://mobile.srh.weather.gov/

You can contrast that with their normal page:

http://www.weather.gov/

Part of the consideration is not that the screen space is so limited, but that you don't want to have to download large amounts of data over a cellular network. They're getting faster - I've got the GSM network - but they are generally as slow or slower than dial up.

[RoadToad]

Getting a web site to work well on a handheld IS definitely a separate problem from making it load okay on dialup. You can make it load quicker by doing what you mentioned, keeping your content simple and your files small. But it's pretty tough, maybe impossible, to make a site work really well on a 4" handheld and not look crappy on a 19" pc monitor. Another solution I've heard of is the new .mobi domain. It's a new top-level domain dedicated solely to handhelds. I don't have one myself, though, so I can't vouch for it personally. Either way, it's gotta be expensive, since it would entail basically re-creating all your content in a format suitable for handhelds, and hosting parallel sites. But there does seem to be some interest, and handhelds are all the rage, so it might be worth it. Here's a web site with some info about .mobi, if you're interested: http://mtld.mobi/

Maybe we'll see fishin.mobi some day!