August 26, 2007 - 4 comments

Go Mobile!—The .mobi basics

Recently, theMechanism has become more interested than ever in mobile web development. Dave and I were talking a bit about the possibilities after work the other day, and we got so excited we snapped up our first .mobi domain. Now that we had it, though, what to do with it?

While I’ve made a site “mobile friendly in two minutes,” heard of the .mobi domain, read a little about Flash Lite, and worked with semacode, I haven’t engaged in any serious, professional mobile development. So, as senior developer for theMechanism, it was incumbent upon me to do some research. Dave asked me to share my findings on the blog. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about mobile development here while working on themechanism.mobi (note—themechanism.mobi must be accessed by a mobile device or else you’ll simply be routed to themechanism.com).

Why mobile development?

Well, there are facts such as “internet-enabled mobile phones outnumber PCs four to one” [1]. Then there’s the dream/nightmare of ubiquitous computing—using semacode we can “build applications that combine aspects of the virtual world into the real world” [2]. Finally, it's (relatively) new (and therefore exciting) and, given the release of the iPhone, sexier than ever.

.mobi Domains

While a mobile site can be located anywhere (a domain, subdomain, or subdirectory) “.mobi is the first—and only—top level domain dedicated to users who access the Internet through their mobile phones. General registration of .mobi names began on 26 September and is now open to everyone.” [3]

mTLD Top Level Domain, Ltd. was appointed by ICANN as the official global registry for the .mobi top level domain [4]. To achieve their goal of a domain dedicated to mobile users, mTLD (known informally as dotMobi) has established three mandatory rules that registrants must agree to comply with when they register a .mobi name. mTLD tests all .mobi domains for conformance to the three mandatory rules once per quarter per domain, though this frequency may be increased for sites that have not been compliant in the past. Non-conformant domains will be suspended [5].

Mandatory rules for a .mobi domain:

  1. You are required to use XHTML Mobile Profile 1.0 markup language for the home page of your site if your web application does not have the means to distinguish between devices, or, if your web application is able to distinguish between devices but does not recognize the current device.
  2. The site must work with or without the “www” in the domain name
  3. Frames are not allowed.

That’s it for now. Next time, I’ll talk about some tools to make mobile web development easier.

References

Published by: jeffreybarke in The Programming Mechanism

Comments

Bath
August 26, 2007 at 10:45 pm

I think you’re right that one day, in the not too distant future, the mobile phone will be central to ubiquitous computing.

Consider an early mobile application like Ice Brkr that provides a real world friend request service. Although applications like these are in their infancy (from a Ubiquitous Compting perpesctive) they will evolve into powerful tools that can tell me that the person behind me (in the queue at the coffee shop) is a also a Jazz music lover.

Comments are closed.

Bath
August 26, 2007 at 10:45 pm

I think you’re right that one day, in the not too distant future, the mobile phone will be central to ubiquitous computing.

Consider an early mobile application like Ice Brkr that provides a real world friend request service. Although applications like these are in their infancy (from a Ubiquitous Compting perpesctive) they will evolve into powerful tools that can tell me that the person behind me (in the queue at the coffee shop) is a also a Jazz music lover.

Comments are closed.

Dave Fletcher
September 3, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Cameron Moll is correct in his latest book, Mobile Web Design, when he says that we’re making a mistake when thinking that the mobile phone should give us a similar experience as using a web browser. The two are very distinct animals – interfaces for these smaller devices should be designed accordingly.

It makes me begin to question Apple’s attempt to extend the web browser experience on a smaller device.

Hell, I should write a blog about it while I’m thinking of it… Nice post though, Jeffrey.

Comments are closed.

Dave Fletcher
September 3, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Cameron Moll is correct in his latest book, Mobile Web Design, when he says that we’re making a mistake when thinking that the mobile phone should give us a similar experience as using a web browser. The two are very distinct animals – interfaces for these smaller devices should be designed accordingly.

It makes me begin to question Apple’s attempt to extend the web browser experience on a smaller device.

Hell, I should write a blog about it while I’m thinking of it… Nice post though, Jeffrey.

Comments are closed.