"We wanted the best web browser in the world on our phone, not a baby web browser or a WAP browser, a real Web browser, and we picked the best one in the world, Safari, and we have Safari running on iPhone. It is the first fully usable HTML browser on a phone."
(Steve Jobs, Macworld Conference and Expo, January 2007)
(Steve Jobs, Macworld Conference and Expo, January 2007)
It's unclear whether Safari is the best browser in the world or whether iPhone has the first usable mobile phone browser, but one thing is for sure: many web sites launch iPhone-optimized versions. Maybe it's cool to have a website that looks really well in iPhone or maybe it's fairly easy to target a single mobile phone, because I've never heard about a website that launched an interface optimized for Opera Mini or Nokia's S60 browser.
Google Calendar released an interface for iPhone, based on the mobile version launched in May. Each calendar has a distinctive color, so it's easier to locate important events. Google Calendar for iPhone is available at calendar.google.com, but you can also try it at TestiPhone.com (don't forget to change your user-agent).
How about developing with Opera mini or mobile in mind, since those are the most widely used mobile browsers around ?
ReplyDeletesince you cant install new apps to iphone - it will be kinda complicated :D
ReplyDeleteToo bad they failed to include the iPod touch ...just like virtually every single other iPhone-specific site.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that hard to update the user-agent string to include the iPod touch guys...
Yah, iPod Touch support is practically mandatory, since the native calendar app on the Touch doesn't let you "add" events. The ability to wi-fi into Google Calendar and add them instead would be great.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are more series60 equipped phones out there. If the mobile web is to become more popular, design for the majority, before working on iPhone friendly sites. (Oh yeah & drop your data rates massively please phone companies)
ReplyDeleteWhilst we're on about it. Can we have some more stuff for Series80 please :)
(Disclosure I use a series60 & a Series 80 phone)
No iPod touch support! What's up with that???
ReplyDeleteiPod Touch just came out, so just as it took a couple of weeks/months for a lot of these iPhone sites to get up, you'll probably see the same with Touch (if that thing takes off, of course.)
ReplyDeleteIt is possible to design for all mobile browsers using Style Sheets, but the reality is that until the iPhone came along, no mobile browser has been worth designing for. Sure, some smartphones offer an experience better than your average cell phone, but anytime you're rendering a page differently without being specifically told to by the HTML, you're not ready for primetime.
And $20 / month for internet access via your cell is way too much. But $20 / month for the same access via an iPhone, well it's still expensive but not completely off the charts.
I believe Sprint offers unlimited data for around $10, or at least that's what my plan was before I switched to AT&T.
I wonder if these sites that design iPhone interfaces will also have special interfaces for Google Phone's browser (assuming Google launches a mobile browser), for Microsoft's Deepfish, for Mozilla's Minimo and so on.
ReplyDelete@Ionut Alex Chitu
ReplyDeleteIt all depends on how trendy the gPhone is when it is released. When you consider the amount of hype surrounding the release of the iPhone, you can see how tough it will be for Google to match that kind of marketing/word-of-mouth/viral campaign. If anyone can do it though it certainly is Google.
Considering how trendy Google is right now, I imagine the gPhone will be nothing short of huge if they can hit the right price point.
This looks great, though i echo the sentiments of other users that Google support iTouch as well. Implementind that should be a no-brainer for the Google Calendar Team.
ReplyDeleteI particularly like the simplicity of the UI (as all iPhone UIs are) and the color-coded calendar events.
I can't add events with google mobile calendar. Is zhis normal? Or am I to stupid?
ReplyDeleteis there any way to directly download events from Google Calendar to the iPhone home screen calendar without a computer mediating? In other words,direct synch gCalendar to iphone with gCalendar one-way to iPhone.
ReplyDeleteApple's utter and abject failure to properly account for the fact that some people don't want to be locked into every Apple product on the planet is really starting to irritate me. The fact that I can't subscribe straight to the .ics link generated by google calendar from within the iPhone's calendar app is just a big fat failure.
ReplyDeleteyes, it's kind of a splendid isolation. but there are workarounds...
ReplyDeleteI can't seem to access my google account from the iphone. I have logged in from multiple different machines (PC,MAC,Linux) but the iphone won't work any ideas?
ReplyDeleteworks nice, but i can just add events to the default calendar, there is missing a dropdown to choose the calendar.
ReplyDelete