Many of us in this day and age carry a mobile phone, with a large percentage being able to browse the internet. However, how many of us actually take advantage of this available feature? From personal experience, I tend to use the internet to check information for example train times or football scores while I’m on the move and cannot get access to my computer. However I currently only use the network providers homepage and I’m sure many of us are the same. I have tried to browse additional sites using my phone but many websites can be difficult to find and especially complicated to navigate.

The main reasoning behind websites being difficult to navigate is the lack of consideration for mobile users when a website is being designed. The website design process for handheld devices is different from designing a website that is going to be viewed using a browser on a computer. This is an important aspect to consider as many individuals believe mobile internet will become the next dominant internet platform and therefore websites should be optimised for mobile use.

.mobi (dotMobi) is a new TLD (Top Level Domain) otherwise know as mLTD which is overseen by a company called MTLD (Mobile Top Level Domains) and has iCANN approval. dotMobi domain names are dedicated to provide the internet to mobile users. The .mobi domain name has been available for purchase since the 26th of September 2006. The investors in the .mobi domain name include Google, Microsoft and many companies related to mobile phone industry (e.g. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Three Mobile, Samsung, Vodafone) and many more. However the .mobi domain name does have its objectors. This includes Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, the creator of the WWW (World Wide Web). He believes that all users should be able to access the same sites irrespective of the device that is being used to view the sites and therefore there would be no need for this additional TLD.

At present it is unclear if the dotMobi domain name will become a huge success. I am sure that the use of mobile internet will grow significantly, hence designing website that can be easily accessible by mobile devices should be considered in the development cycle. This does not only include how a website will appear on the screen of a mobile device but also many other factors, for example the bandwidth consumed by a website (this factor will have a major impact on the amount a user many pay for the use of the mobile internet). Below are a few useful websites that may become useful when designing and creating a mobile website:

1. http://www.w3.org/Mobile/ :- A set of accessibility guidelines for mobile websites have been set out by the W3C World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C set out the recommended best practices when designing and creation a mobile website.

2. http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ :- An interesting tools when creating a mobile website is the W3C mobile validator (beta) that will test mobile website validation (this is similar to the validators available for website source code including HTML and CSS)

3. http://www.google.com/gwt/n :- When designing a mobile site, it is possible to preview how the website will be viewed on a standard mobile device. Google offer a mobile phone “simulator”. For example this is how our website would appear to mobile viewers: iMPACT Web Design Mobile Simulator