A Better Small-Screen Experience

Since moving to an HTC S620 I have become less cognizant of the plight of those of you with smaller screens and phones that provide a more restrictive web-browsing experience. This post is for you.

If you are having trouble accessing a website on your phone, or getting it to load in a format that you can read and navigate, I have some tricks that you can try:

• Use the prefix "wap" in the URL
• Example: http://ebay.com vs. http://wap.ebay.com
  
• Use the prefix "m" in the URL
• Example: http://www.flickr.com vs. http://m.flickr.com
  
• Use the prefix "xhtml" in the URL
• Example: http://weather.com vs. http://xhtml.weather.com
  
• Use the index "/pda" after the domain in the URL
• Example: http://google.com vs. http://www.google.com/pda
  
• Use the top-level domain ".mobi"
• Example: http://cnnmoney.com vs. http://cnnmoney.mobi
  

The well-designed websites out there will automatically detect whether you are on a PC or a mobile device and automatically redirect you to the appropriately formatted website. I consider this a "best practice" for web developers, but apparently there is some debate in the developer community about whether there should be "One Web" or two webs -- one for PC users and one for mobile users. Based on my own personal experience, the automatic detection and redirection method has not been universally adopted.

I am not a web developer, so if there are any web developers out there that want to clarify, correct, or expand on my post, please feel free to add a comment.