Through the magic of del.icio.us I was handed a link by my friend D’Arcy Norman to allow WordPress blogs to auto detect the iPhone and simplify the intrface for use on Safari. I know it doesn’t help us here in the Blogs at PSU, but if you are running WordPress the iWPhone plugin may be worth a try. My personal site, Learning & Innovation, is a WordPress powered blog and I have the plugin working over there. Take a peek with your iPhone and see the difference.
In general browsing the web on the iPhone is a good experience, but I am noticing how much better it is as more and more people start deploying iPhone friendly versions of their sites.
Oh, man. Am I in a time warp? I thought the browser wars were over, but now I find design practices to customize pages for the Safari browser in iPhone. The new syntax of the link tag (not the CSS, mind you) boggles the mind, and smells of browser sniffing. I have lots of experience sniffing browsers, and I can tell you it’s a mad game to keep up with new browsers and customizing pages therefore. HeeheeheeheehaahaaaaaaWooop! (This comment best viewed with Safari browsers for iPhone updated after August 1, 2007)
Oh, man. Am I in a time warp? I thought the browser wars were over, but now I find new methods to customize pages for the Safari browser in iPhone. The new syntax of the link tag ("only screen and …" is not standard – *gasp!) is very rigged, and smells of browser sniffing. I have lots of experience sniffing browsers in the dark days of the late 90s, and I am here to tell you it’s a mad game to keep up with new browsers and customizing served pages. Heeheeheeheehaahaaaaaa Wooop! (This comment best viewed with Safari browsers for iPhone updated after August 1, 2007 etc.)
That’s my first reaction. My second is to ask, why hide the iPhone UI goodness from other browsers. I’ve seen enough examples of apps that had beautiful and accessible pages full of information, text and objects cleverly hidden and exposed by good, well-behaved javascript; nothing weird, and Firefox-ready to boot. We should test the new design patterns and decide if they could work for a much wider range of contexts and agents. OK, so 400 plus pixel widths won’t work, so maybe there is a role after all for that silly link tag hack.