Trend: Mobile Versions of Sites and Web Applications

You can’t deny it.  All the cool kids with their smartphones and their pricey data plans are browsing up a storm on their mobile web browsers.  The demand for sites to provide a mobile optimized UI for their site, either through CSS or a seperate mobile application, has never been higher*.

While the goal is to provide a UI that is streamlined for devices with smaller screens and “non-mouse” user interaction, many sites/applications fall short… seemingly gearing their UI’s to only fit the same amount of information on a smaller screen, and not much else.  There are, however, some standards and best practices that are starting to emerge.

References:
A List Apart – Return of the Mobile Stylesheet

*Note: Yes, I know we don’t have our mobile version up yet… it’s under construction :)