Optimizing your site for mobile devices is no longer optional
UPDATED: Here’s a newer article with tips on optimizing a WordPress site for mobile readers.
Downloading music on a mobile phone
It’s hard to let go of long-held notions of what the Internet is and how it works. I usually plan new tools and sites with myself in mind as the target customer, specifically at my workstation. This is great for rapid prototyping but it leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to supporting some really important usage scenarios. Mobile phones are now the dominant computing platform worldwide.
At work last week I noticed a situation where “works in the office!” thinking could cause serious problems in case of late-night support calls. Our network file server doesn’t respond very well via slow remote connections, so some of our “in case of emergency” reference documents are stored in a separate repository accessible through our Notes mail server. The reason this is so important is that remote support on our systems is done via broadband (or dialup) connections piped through a VPN which can’t offer sufficient network speed to inefficiently scan and list the contents of our huge shared directories.
Luckily for us Notes does some of the heavy lifting so we get by ok via VPN on our PCs. If we want to do some remote support via smartphone we’re going to be out of luck. Maybe the next iteration of our support infrastructure can push our important HOWTO documents into our SharePoint server. From there all we’ve got to do to offer lo-fi support access is give the SharePoint server a separate stylesheet for mobile browsing. We’d also need a way to allow mobile phones to connect via VPN. Do you know a way to use VPN on a cell phone? I’ll need to research that one.
image credit: leeleblanc
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Categories: Sharing at Work
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