Affordable, but inaccessible mobile Internet

- Cross post from my blog
Today, the mobile Internet is no longer a rarity, but a convenient tool. It can be found almost everywhere. In a traffic jam, you can see a laptop in the front seat of a neighbor, in the subway of a student who reads bash.org.ru, and in a public garden on the bench a girl who sits in ICQ.

With all confidence we can say - today the mobile Internet is available more than ever. Available in many ways, in particular - the Internet is where there is a provider coverage (another quality issue, but more on that later) and inexpensive.

If you take me as an example, I’m not refusing myself two hours a day - forums, blogs, news feeds, bash and IM, right down to Skype. In addition to Skype, I use all these benefits in the subway. And I pay for this pleasure a maximum of 250 rubles per month.

However, if you think that the entire network is available to you, then you are not mistaken. Let's go through the examples, even show screenshots. The task is simple, find out from some organizations the phone number or address.
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What cons can we meet? There are several of them, in my opinion. I will describe those that really interfere with getting information. This is a phone or mail, which are shown in the picture. As a rule, I turn off the pictures in order to speed up the download and save on traffic. All anything, you say, is alt, which is created specifically for this. However, not all webmasters size images, and alternative text. And if an alternative text is entered, then it is completely non-obvious, for example: “Telephone”. For example, the site of a fairly well-known bank, whose ATMs you saw for sure. I will not give an active link, otherwise you will consider it as an advertisement - just a screenshot:

Next comes a well-known office that will “help” us to book a ticket, for example, to a concert:

There are so many such examples in runet. The next time you go to any site from a mobile phone - pay attention.
Now let's see how you can organize a version of the site that will be comfortable to view on the screen of a mobile phone.

I see only two options that deserve consideration. However, among the two options there is an absolute leader. But I will tell about both.

Option number one - styles:

The concept of media type is introduced in CSS, when a style is applied only to a specific one - for handsets it is a handheld. For example, the code for connecting styles for a mobile phone will look like this:

<style type="text/css">
@import "/style/palm.css" handheld;
</style>

Such styles are optimized in a special way. They replace design with graphics for design in the html + css bundle, hide unnecessary, for example, blocks of secondary importance and block sizes rule somewhat. Unfortunately, I am not ready to write a universal manual on optimizing styles for mobile phones. Although the question is interesting, and maybe I'll cover it, someday. This method is good because by spending a minimum of effort you can adapt the page overloaded with graphics and information to a more or less suitable form, to view it using a mobile device (in the end, there is PSP, Palma, etc.). However, I prefer another method.

Option number two:

You probably know the following pages:



As you can see, these are full-featured (with some exceptions) versions of sites, but in a special, minimized format. Optimized graphics that weigh a penny and are cached, few styles that, although cached, still generate traffic and a minimal amount of Java Script - this is the key to the success of mobile versions of sites. This method is good for everyone, in fact, I have to admit, some time ago I was forced to sit on a dial-up, and the mobile versions of Yandex and mail.ru saved me a lot (yes, yes - I had a need for mail.ru - please do not throw tomatoes)
As you can see, at the cheap cost of the mobile Internet, we cannot enjoy all the charms of the Network. And as long as our mobiles do not learn to deploy screens up to 13 inches - we will have to meet with a large number of sites that are frankly hostile to us, ordinary users, are configured.

Here is a story from the life of my friend, the courier. He was given the task to deliver a package of documents, deadlines were running out (express delivery), and he galloped across Europe and rushed somewhere to the outskirts of the city, to an area that was essentially in the midst of construction. Naturally the guy was lost, but decided to get out of the situation and make a phone call. Specified in the invoice. It turned out that the number is wrong. In the control room could not help, and probably did not want to. Having learned the company's website through Yandex, he enters there and stumbles upon the site. Which is completely woven from pictures. Text, menu, side blocks - I had to load pictures. It’s not even a matter of money, but in time - he barely managed to deliver a package of documents by the appointed time. But it was worth nothing to add alternative text to the picture with the phone.

The most annoying thing is that tomorrow you may need to find out not the telephone number for work, but the address of the nearest pharmacy or the telephone number of the nearest hospital. Naturally there are alternative sources of this information, but this does not eliminate the unpleasant aftertaste when you come across a site, a screenshot of which I posted first in this note.