Will You Change Your Web Site For the iPhone? 336
An anonymous reader calls to our attention a blog post about the way the iPhone's multi-touch UI will strain the interface conventions of Web 2.0. This looming clash comes clearer as Apple releases more details of the iPhone's UI. Much has been made about the iPhone including Safari to provide a full web browsing experience. But this reader is wondering how compatible certain sites will be with the iPhone's input. From the post: "[Web 2.0-style interaction] makes somewhat heavy use of 'onmouse' events and cursor changes... along with CSS a:hover styles. The iPhone challenges those particular Web 2.0 conventions, though, because it is a device that not only adds support for another pointer, but at the same time eliminates them as interface objects... [T]he user doesn't get to express their attention with the iPhone... They only get to express their immediate action." This reader asks, "What other pitfalls lurk in the multi-touch web? Do any Slashdot readers plan to adjust their sites to ensure they work with the iPhone, and can you think of any similar issues that will crop up with such a different browsing experience?"
Won't be a big deal (Score:5, Informative)
Simple.
For those who don't know, iPhone uses some tricks to detect "zones" or "areas" on web pages that will automatically zoom to fit when double clicked, like a photo with caption, or a story column on a newspaper web page.
This person is overcomplicating things, and overreacting ("pitfalls"? "adjust [...] sites to ensure they work with iPhone"?) No sites need to be changed to work well with the browser (or, at least as well as, and, from all of the demos and appearances, probably quite a bit better than, any other mobile browser). The user wants to zoom in, they zoom in. So what if it's not perfect. Sure, some sites can offer a better "experience" specifically for iPhone if they choose, but they don't need to.
That's why this thing having a real, full browser, able to be viewed in portrait or landscape, is great. It will be nice to have a full browser on a phone that doesn't suck, even if I can't double-click and perfectly zoom to fit on a photo and instead have to zoom on an area of interest manually. Some might say "but it's not consistent!" Well, what do you think it does when you double click? If a special "zone" isn't present, it will probably just zoom as close to where you clicked as it can. If it's not perfect, you can even drag the display around with your finger, or pinch/unpinch to zoom more/less as appropriate.
Disclaimer: yeah, we don't "know" any of this yet, but just look at the demos and how the phone works. And anyone can try it out next Friday. It will probably be a much better browsing experience than on nearly any, if not all, other mobile browsers.
Re:I write to standards (Score:3, Informative)
If the :hover class works based on where your finger is (or if it has a proximity detecting screen...!), so much the better.
It will not. This was pointed out by Steve Jobs in the WWDC keynote address.
I'd change it (Score:2, Informative)
Re: iPhone User agent string (Score:1, Informative)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419.3
Re:Conjecture about the iPhone? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nah... (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)