.mobi
Nowadays more and more users are accessing web services using mobile phones, therefore the wesites must be optimized for that.
Some of the main limitations when accessing a webpage from a mobile phone are:
- Small screen size
- Lack of windows - On a desktop computer, the ability to open more than one window at a time allows for multi-tasking. On mobile web, only one page can be displayed at a time.
- Navigation - Mobile devices do not use a mouselike pointer
- Types of pages accessible - Many devices cannot access pages with a secured connection, Flash or other similar software, PDFs, or video sites.
- Speed - On most mobile devices, the speed of service is very slow
For this reason, a new domain namely ".mobi" was born.
.mobi (also known informally as dotMobi) is a top-level domain approved by ICANN and managed by the mTLD global registry dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices via the Mobile Web. The 100% of .mobi sites must be optimized for viewing on a mobile phone. From the users' perspective, they are guaranteed a site optimized for their devices.
To develop mobile web sites, the Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is used. It is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax.
Useful links for XHTML tutorials:
http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/
http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/xhtml
http://msconline.maconstate.edu/tutorials/XHTML/default.htm
XHTML: example page
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN""http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd" >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<style type="text/css">
p {text-align: left }
p.big {font-size: 120%}
p.normal {font-weight: normal}</style>
<title> XHTML TEST </title>
</head>
<body>
<p class = "big">Here goes the header<br />
<img src="images/mdd.jpg" width="145" height="123" alt="" />
<br />
</p>
<p class = "normal">
Test page </p>
</body>
</html>
Page validating
After developing the website, it can be tested and validated using some of the online validators. Here you find some links to them: