iPhone = myPhone

As a proud owner of a brand new Apple iPhone who has explored its extensive feature list, I naturally found myself spending most of my time with its web implementation. So I recently put on my web developer cap and poked around a few of my favorite websites.

Using a lite version of Apple’s Safari browser, they have created the closest thing to a desktop web experience on a mobile device. There are, however, a few caveats — chief among them is the lack of support for Flash movies. Though it’s not exactly good practice for a website to be built only in Flash, Apple does seem to be taking a risk by not including any support. There has been speculation that Apple has done this to try and muscle people into using their preferred video encoding method. But enough about the iPhone — this is not meant to be a review. I want to address is the burgeoning growth of the web across multiple platforms, predominantly on mobile devices.

Unfortunately, the iPhone is the exception, and not the rule, when it comes to displaying web content (nearly) correctly on mobile devices. Referencing my previous post about developing for multiple browsers, my arguments increase ten-fold when dealing with mobile browsers. Whether or not a website user’s phone supports CSS, JavaScript or even images is a guessing game at best.

So the question is: how long until the rest of the industry catches up to Apple? Many of the websites which function 100% correctly on the majority of mobile devices are watered down, text-based versions of a much larger site. As simple ESPN.com’s mobile version looks, though, it took time, and therefore money for someone to develop it.

This is where the web browser on the iPhone starts to excite us web developers. Rather than spending time, and invariably, the client’s money, building a separate version of the main content areas of the site, developers could focus on specific mobile applications made to enhance your Web site on a mobile device — not replace it.

With Apple setting the bar so high on their first mobile phone, I’m anxiously waiting to see what is on the horizon for mobile technology. Hopefully the spirit of competition will encourage innovation and help drive down prices – $600 is a lot of money.