Any Other Truly Mobile Friendly Engineering Website Out There?

Sounds you want us to do your market research. Do you want a pad on the shoulder too?

Sorry sit here in front of my computer and have no urge to change that by using a mobile phone. Why would I?

I hear you IdeaSmith, I am the same way, never use my phone to surf the web. But it is clear the advice I give is for those who have their own website, or produce websites for others. (Primarily I was concerned for the companies about to hire someone to build a website for them when I wrote this advice.) I wrote it for those who are not thinking of just themselves, but thinking about the millions of potential customers around the world who may, or may not learn about their company via the internet. That is who needs to know what I shared. And who it would be nice if they replied to this blog post with what they found. (Yes, it could be considered doing my research for me, but actually I have already done the research myself and was just sharing the valuable knowledge with other company owners here.

That W3 mobile-friendly validator site is itself *not* mobile-friendly to my Galaxy S5. The text runs off the screen but won't let me zoom out to see it all, making it even LESS friendly than desktop sites that make no attempt at being mobile-friendly (including this site, which works simply because it's well-designed).

So much for 'world-class mobile-friendly validation,' ay?

LOL

Yea, some sites have grown too large for it to be cost effective to redesign to be truly mobile friendly. For those you just design a new site just for mobile customers, and use code to detect if they are accessing via PC or smartphone. If they are accessing via smartphone, your URL directs them to your mobile version of website. In doing the research, I used their own W3 validator on their own example websites they provided and found they scored below 50%, so I set our standards at 70%, so our site would be an even better example.

Half the world may access the Internet using mobile phones but most of that is worthless access to watch YouTube, check Facebook, Twitter and whatever else mindless drivel that people do on the Internet. Admittedly, some of those folks are looking for a restaurant, or getting GPS directions or something, but those folks are in a minority.

So, quite frankly, I couldn't give a rat's derierre whether the engineering site is 'mobile friendly' or not. If I'm doing engineering, there is a desktop or laptop nearby with broadband access.

Sometimes you're in the field, and you want tables so you can bounce math around in your head. Sometimes you're in an airport, and use your phone for a second screen so you can keep what you're working on up top on your laptop, same as you would with multiple screens and a desktop. Sometimes you're in a meeting, and somebody spouts off like they know something for a fact that simply isn't true, and it keeps things from being your memory against theirs.

It is a tiny computer that is always in your pocket with access to worldwide information and sick amounts of storage for the intermittent engineering uses it has. Why would you NOT find that useful?