Greg Sterling has a thought provoking item entitled Phones vs. Alternative Mobile Devices. An extract will give the sense of the future he is portraying:
What if devices like .. the Nokia 770 or the Sony PSP become the dominant mode of mobile web access for people and so-called “feature phones” (traditional cell phones) remain the dominant mode of mobile voice communication? I’m suggesting two separate devices, hypothetically, with most mobile web surfing on the non-phone. People who can’t afford two just have a phone.
That future scenario seems to be a very likely one. It is very exciting and also very challenging.
One group that will find the scenario challenging is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They have a Mobile Web Initiative, which aims to promote the One Web Principle. This ensures that content provided by accessing a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) yields a thematically coherent experience when accessed from different devices. They have developed the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 for website design for mobile devices. This includes the notion of a Default Delivery Context. This specifies a Usable Screen Width of a minimum of 120 Pixels.
At the moment, CSS style sheets are used to modify the way content is displayed or rendered on a device. The Recognized media types include only one type for handheld. It’s unlikely that such a style sheet for a handheld can bridge the wide gap between the two types of mobile devices that Greg Sterling is envisaging.
