The Failings of the Mobile Web

Mobile sites drive me nuts. Maybe I'm ill informed, but in the days of Operamini, where anyone with a java enabled phone can easily view any webpage, regardless of formatting, style or graphical content, I don't see the need for these sites to exist.

I want a single web for everything.

When I hop online using my phone - to read the morning blogs, check the daily news, or peruse my local sports page - the last thing I want to see is a white page with 10-20 boring blue links.

I want graphics. I want richness. Internet is like TV. It is engaging, moving, changing and above all else, graphical. But where it differs from TV, and where it becomes more interesting, is that it is a hot media, as opposed to a cold media.

When one watches TV, one becomes a vegetable... a potato, if you will. When one views the same content on the web, one becomes engrossed, both in the media and in the endless ways to interact with it.

Mobile sites kill this interaction, and more importantly, mobile sites kill the graphical interface.

Another shortcoming of mobile sites, is the need to "click through" to the story you are after.

When you go to x webpage, and get the mobile version instead, all you usually see is a link to the story(ies). This requires one more click to read that article. Further, if you are reading something like a blog, you click through to that article, reach the end, and then have to backup, find the next, and click yet again. The tedium just builds and builds.

Whereas, if you were to browse it as it was originally designed, you would see multiple articles, one following the other, with comments, trackbacks, etc. All of these things are what makes the web so interesting, and so all-freaking-consuming. And that is exactly what I want from it.

Mobile sites are like rss feeds, but without the nice interface. And I promise (whether you like it or not) to never, ever, redirect you to a mobile site.

-Mike