Fury Friday: Non-optimised mobile websites
Every Friday, I'll be jumping on the soapbox and letting rip into the things of the week that have annoyed the living daylights out of me. Think of a dumbed down version of Peter Griffin's 'Grind my Gears'.
This week, there has been only a small handful of things that really made me want to punch an old lady in the back of the head with futile anger:
- Liberal Democrats.
- Any more than a centimetre of snow.
- That thing President Obama does with his arms as he walks out of Air Force One..
This week I spent a full 48 hours solely on my BlackBerry handset, trying to perform the ordinary tasks that a student undertakes. Today when I wrote it up, even after I documented it, the fury raged within and I realised how annoying websites are that do not take into account the mobile browser user.
Why not? Really, why not? The mobile market is huge, yet you still refuse to invest maybe a few hours (or weeks) of your developers' time to create a mobile version, dynamically referenced to the main site, which displays content for smaller screens? You idiot.
Whenever I smack my nose walk into the brick wall of a non-mobile optimised site, a little bit of sick hits the back of my throat. I want to find the nearest Jedi, or whichever one of those mindlessly dull characters wields those light sabre things around and perform laser eye surgery on myself with one.
In fact, I'll go one step further. I'd rather have a verbal colonic from Paxman himself, forcing me to choke out my thorax and strangle myself with my own pathetic words.
- Previous weeks: 'My browser is better than yours'
- Previous weeks: Gratuitous product placement mid-TV show
- Previous weeks: Mobile devices without copy and paste
Think of the sort of thing that you have going, whether it's a business website, a news source, a social media application - whatever it is, you can all but guarantee you will have mobile users. At no point should a little magnifying glass be displayed on a mobile screen asking the user to zoom in. No, that is not a mobile optimised site; it's a farce.
Though there are rules to take into account when designing it, think of the wider benefits. A mobile web browser come in all shapes and sizes and don't always perform as well as others. Frankly, if you need a 22-year old student to tell you this, you should seriously consider nominating yourself for a Darwin Award.
Oh. I seem to have come to the end of my argument already.
Grawrrwrr.