Peter-Paul Koch has won international renown with his browser compatibility research and is the man with opinions about mobile web. Here is one of his opinions: mobile Safari is this generation’s Internet Explorer 6, and will be hated by future webdevs.
FSM EXCLUSIVE DEAL No matter how much better the iPhone/iPad/iPod might be as a mobile browsing experience, developing content that only works on those devices, ignores everything else, is a backward step.
The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don’t pay attention, we’ll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we’ll have the real mobile web that wasn’t made by us and doesn’t give a shit about web standards and best practices. Worse, it seems web developers are happy with this state of affairs.
Mentioning Nokia is the mark of the rude boor. The man of discernment mentions the iPhone. And mentions it and mentions it and mentions it. And then mentions the iPad, to show he is open to non-iPhone devices. The bigger the better.
Peter-Paul notes that too many webdevs are concentrating on optimizing for MobileSafari , even though there are a lot more platforms out there, that they can work with. The same thing happened back in 2000, when Internet Explorer 6 was the most popular browser, but today webdevs from all around the world are trying to get rid of it once and for all.
[via QuirksBlog]