Mobile Users Welcome Here

Yesterday MichLib announced that it has gone mobile, which means that it is user friendly to folks like me who view blogs with a cell phone or PDA. It’s a welcome change … the mobile format strips the images and other intense components out of the site, and delivers only the text of the most recent articles. It would be nice to be able to view comments and non-front page diaries … that’s a lot of content to miss. Of course, a reader can get this content simply by not selecting “mobile user” from the menu directly under the MichLib logo (upper left). But that leaves you with the same old screen you had before optimization, and that’s a lot of scrolling past things that you will never use from your cell phone. I can tell you from experience, this takes a long time on a 2″ screen, and it leads to sore fingers.

Christinebarry.com is also optimized for mobile users. This is accomplished with the WordPress PDA plugin, which automatically detects browser type and loads the appropriate theme. Because this involves automatic browser detection, you do not have the option to “opt out” and view the normal site using your phone. However, as someone who has played with these technologies for quite some time, I have decided that this is the best way to offer content for mobile users. The header and top-column style navigation take a long time to load and scroll through. If you’re like me, you are using a cell phone or a PDA because you only have a few minutes to catch up on things. You probably don’t have a whole lotta patience to wait for a site to load just to see if there’s a new post. That problem is solved with this plugin.

The WordPress PDA plugin allows users to view and leave comments, but it doesn’t seem to allow users to log in to the WordPress dashboard. If you use this theme and moblog, you will probably have to post via email.

If you are a Sprint user, you can use the Sprint Mobile Newsstand on your cell phone to read your favorite blogs. It’s a free service, and I believe it is installed in the software on all of the newest phones.

If you are a Bloglines user, you can also access your reader in a user friendly format at http://www.bloglines.com/mobile.