• Part 1: Why Go Mobile?
• Part 2: Mobilize Your Site the Easy Way
• Part 3: iPhonitizing Your Site Sans MoFuse
• Part 4: 14 iPhone-Formatted Websites
• Part 5: iPhoneMicrosites.com

I think it’s about time to bring this series to a close, with today’s post “7 Useful Mobile Site Resources.” I have to admit, the biggest reason I wrote this series was because I recently got my hands on an iPod Touch, after far too much waiting. I’ve been thinking about the topic for a long time, well before I got the i’Touch, since before I was seriously considering buying one (since the first generation Touch came out).

Now, where should you go from here? Following are a few resources that you may find useful.

1. Mobile Web Development by Nirav Mehta

Mobile Web Development is focused on non-iPhone mobile sites (I’m not sure if it even mentions the iPhone). It’s fairly current, having been published in 2008, and covers a broad array of topics in it’s 216 pages. It covers WML and WAP, XHTML MP, sending text messages (SMS) via server-side script, PayPal Mobile, Interactive Voice, and a few other things.

I haven’t tried out any of the examples or anything, but I read through the book, and it seems to be good overall. It’s an easy read, and shouldn’t take much time to get through.

2. iPod Touch or iPhone

Now, you can get by without one of these. You can use simulators to get a good idea of what a page will look like on the iPhone (I gave a couple links here), or you can borrow someone else’s for a couple minutes. But if you do a lot of work targetted at the iPhone, especially if you do it professionally, it’s a logical purchase.

The iPod Touch has come down in price, costing $229 for the 8GB model. Not something you want to impulse-buy, but if you’re looking for a new MP3 player it’s a good option.

3. MoFuse

I know, I know. I already wrote an entire post about MoFuse fo this series. It’s a great service, and one ideal for newbies and those who aren’t the Do-it-Yourself type. I’m not saying it’s only for newbies, after all some bigwig blogs (blogwigs?) like ReadWriteWeb use it, but it’s a great option for them.

MoFuse allows you to “Mobilize your blog” in about ten minutes. You simply create a free account, supply your blog’s URL, and pick a URL for your resulting mobile site. The URL will look something like you.mofuse.mobi, though you can map it to your own subdomain if you wish (m.yourdomain.com is a common convention).

Did I mention it generates an iPhone version and a WML version?

4. CiUI

My favorite JavaScript iPhone interface. CiUI was developed by CNET for their own mobile site. Their developers made it publicly available, with a little bit of documentation. A little bit of server-side scripting magic can pull posts from WordPress (or whatever you content management system may be) and display them in the AJAX-y interface. Or you could build a web app with it.

5. Apple Developer Connection

The maker of the iPhone and iPod Touch has plenty of documentation on their website for web app developers. There are tutorials, specs, and more. You need to create a free developer account to access the documents though.

6.� iPhoneMicrosites.com

iPhone Microsites is another web location I covered in this series. They have a nice collection of articles, news, and tutorials to help you build iPhone sites. They also offer their services to build such sites for you. (Their services are a little pricey for most individuals, and are more targetted at businesses, I would assume.) Their tutorial section is especially worth a look.

7.� A List Apart

ALA is one of the most popular designer sites ever. Since 1998 they’ve been in the business of informing and teaching “people who make websites.” They have a couple posts on iPhone/i’Touch web development.

• Put Your Content in My Pocket
• Put Your Content in my Pocket, Part II

Definitely worth a read. If you haven’t been to A List Apart before, you don’t know what you’re missing. I’m not a frequent reader (I just drop in now and then rather than subscribe), but I just may end up adding them to my feed reader one of these days…

Conclusion

Well, there you have it. Six days of nothing but mobile web development. Perhaps I should start a spin-off blog, iPhone-Source? (FYI, I’m kidding. I don’t have time for that… ). It would be fun though…

If you have any questions about anything from the past six posts, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll do my best to answer it.

MoFuse allows you to “Mobilize your blog” in about ten minutes. You simply create a free account, supply your blog’s URL, and pick a URL for your resulting mobile site. The URL will look something like you.mofuse.mobi, though you can map it to your own subdomain if you wish (m.yourdomain.com is a common convention).

You can upload a logo, customize the color scheme, and control what goes into your mobile site. You start out with a homepage consisting of just your ten most recent posts, though you can add in more RSS feeds, static pages, and links to other sites.

MoFuse generates both an iPhone/iPod Touch version and a WML version, and sends visitors to the correct one when they access the site. Users of computers will see previews of what it will look like on their mobile device. Take a look for yourself with source.mofuse.mobi.

• iPhone Version
• WML Version

You can place a link to your MoFuse page on your site, or you can use a bit of PHP code they provide to automatically detect mobile users visiting your site and send them to MoFuse.

Mofuse is a great option for anyone looking to easily put together a mobile version of their blog (or any RSS-equipped website).

Come back tomorrow for the next post in The Mobile Web.

Today, the mobile web is split between two groups: iPhone/iPod Touch users and everybody else.

Plenty of people have phones now that can browse stripped-down WML pages, which is painful at best, impossible at worst. Then Apple came out with the iPhone and iPod Touch, finally creating a mobile device that’s actually bearable to surf the web with. (I recently bought an iPod Touch, and I have to say it’s awesome.)

iPhone and iPod Touch

As great as the iPhone/i’Touch is, it’s not perfect. It’s still much easier to navigate an iPhone-specific page than a normal page. I can read pretty much any page on the web with ease on my iPod Touch. Here I am reading a page on Pro Blog Design with the device:

Looks fairly easy to read, right? With a double-tap, you can make a portion of the page (in this case the content column) fill the screen for easy viewing. From there you can scroll in any direction by dragging your finger along the screen. Need more horizontal space? Just rotate the device, and the display will switch to landscape mode.

Easy enough, but iPhone-specific pages are even better. Here’s a screenshot of iphone.cnet.com, which I believe to be the best-made iPhone site so far:

Looks fairly similar to the iPhone’s menu system, doesn’t it? It works much like they do also. Want to see if the latest episode of the Buzz Out Loud podcast is out? Tap “Podcast Central”; the menu will slide away, being replaced with a new one. Then tap “Buzz Out Loud” and check through the results to see if there’s a new one. If there is, you can even play it right then, streaming it over the webs. (You would be advised to only try streaming web audio over WiFi, and not over 3G or EDGE phone service.)

You can find pretty much everythig CNET has to offer through the iPhone (thanks to the wonders of databases). You can even search, to easily find a specific product review; you can read current tech news; you can see what the CNET bloggers are talking about today. It works well. Why? Everything is put together here in an easily navigable list that can be scrolled through with the flick of a finger. No zooming or horizontal panning necessary.

Which is better for your site? Should you have a version of your site for the iPhone and iPod Touch, or should you just let them use your normal site? It depends on three factors:

1. Is your site’s design easy to navigate on the iPhone?
2. What type of content do you have?
3. Who is your audience?

To get a vague idea of what your site will look like on the iPhone, use a tool such as iPhoney or TestiPhone. You’ll get better results though if you try it out on an actual device (which is part of why I bought an iPod Touch). Borrow a friend’s for a couple of minutes, or walk into your local Apple store (or other consumer electronics store) and play with a demo model. (Apple stores pretty much always have open WiFi networks, so you’ll be able to test your site out there.)

For the second item on the list, just ask yourself a couple questions: Is my content time-oriented (such as news)? Would I want to check this site for new postings when I’m out and doing things?

As for your audience, think about the sort of people who use your site. (If you have no clue, run a reader survey.) Do they have any of Apple’s web-ready mobile devices? Are they g33ks? Are they the sort of people who want to keep up with online goings on no matter where they are?

In the end, the decision is up to you. Do you think it’s necessary to build an iPhone-specific version of your site? If you have ten minutes free (or a few hours, depending on how you want to go about it), go ahead and throw one together. The worst that can happen is no one will use it.

The Watered-Down Web: WML Sites

WML, or Wireless Markup Language, is a subset of XML. It’s like a stripped-down version of XHTML. There aren’t a lot of formatting options, and the syntax is very strict. A lot of phones out there can view sites formatted in WML, but it’s not a pleasant experience. I don’t happen to have a WAP device, but here’s an approximation of what it looks like:

I don’t happen to have a WML device, but simulators like this show a fairly good approximation of how they work. They don’t look all that great, you can’t have more than a couple of images, and navigation is a nightmare, relying on the phone’s keypad to scroll and activate links. You probably won’t find a device with a screen capable of showing more than ten lines of 25 characters either.

If you think your site would potentially be of value to users of WML devices, you could go ahead and put together a WML version, but keep in mind that most people with WML-capable phones don’t use them to browse the web, due to the painful navigation, slow speeds, and lack of support.

Conclusion

So, are you interested in putting together a mobile site? Stay tuned, part two of this series will be coming at you tomorrow.