Berners-Lee on Mobile...

Not enough web designers are making mobile sites. According to Berners-Lee in a recent interview, it's "chicken or egg, just like originally when the Web became the Web".

I don't think he's right.

Firstly, the question why make a site accessible via mobile has to be answered. Let's face it, most site designers don't have any motivation for "mobilising" their sites. Is it going to affect the function or return on the site? Most of the time, probably not.

Secondly, PCs were made for manipulating and viewing documents. Therefore, the Web, or more correctly the browser, as a PC-application, didn't require any paradigm change. Mobiles are for dialing numbers and calling people, not for viewing documents. At best, they allow viewing pithy text messages. On most mobile handsets, this still hasn't changed.

"Mobile browsing" is a misnoma. The fact that the "XHTML-lite" initiative hasn't spawned many mobile sites should tell us something...

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