As Kate mentioned, use of the internet is getting increasingly more mobile as all sorts of new crazy technologies are thought up. Truly, how long ago was it since we all did have those horrible AOL dial-up connections...and now half of us carry around our internet-accessing phones in our pockets? I'm not going to lie: Blackberrys (Blackberries?) and iPhones and all these things confuse me, and they make me a little scared that we're all going to turn into robot zombies with our eyes being replaced by scanners because they're worn out by the time we're 30 from squinting at tiny little screens... I'll stop here.
Anyway, to get to the point, the face of the interwebs is becoming pocket-sized. That means that website design will also have to adjust. I don't think that an actually normal-sized computer screen will become completely obsolete -- it's pretty hard to do in-depth research on a teensy screen -- but websites will also need itty bitty designs in order to fit content on the increasing number of itty bitty screens. I think different versions of a website will be necessary depending on how and on what device that website is being accessed. For the teensy screens, it will all be about ease of navigation and search in order to minimize items on each tiny page and yet still have all the content readily available. Will this be a total pain for the designers? Yes. Ah, well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You're not alone. It seems to me that people are a bit TOO connected these days. Long gone are the days when one needed to wait until they reached a computer to "google" something. Personally, I can't stand competing with a little electronic device for someone's attention. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
ReplyDeleteThe thought of designing webpages for the tiny screens on these devices irritates me. I have a hard enough time simply reading the little displays. Trying to figure out how to arrange all the content of a site so that it looks good on these pint-sized displays is a cruel form of torture.
I completely agree with your stance on the future of the 'mobile' web. There still are things out there that are never going to shift from PC to mobile simply because it does not make practical sense. Mobility is only good to an extent, a very large extent, but an extent non-the-less. PCs and large desktop monitors will continue to be useful for the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it just be easier if people only used their phones to check e-mail. I think you hit the reality of the situation right. Screen size isn't going in just one direction. Web designers are going to have to work twice as hard now to make everything work for all the different types of medium.
ReplyDeleteAs for the eyes being replaced by scanners, I hope that doesn't happen...I like my eyes!