Mobile edition

I'm experimenting with a mobile edition of this weblog, suitable for reading on a Treo or similar palmtop device. The key issues for making this practical, I think, are (1) the low bandwidth of the handheld makes small, fast pages even more important, (2) lots of handhelds are monochrome, so color is less useful, (3) it's nice if the page looks good on a desktop browser; CSS stylesheets make this practical, and (4)supporting experimental technology is easiest when you don't need to do much work.

Setting up Tinderbox to custom-build the mobile page took about an hour -- chiefly tinkering with the stylesheets for desktop support. The process is now automatic; an agent builds the page whenever I update the site. I can forget the mobile page entirely until I want to redesign it.

This also illustrates a familiar adage; a good way to get an organization to support a technology is to get the managers to use it. My interest in mobile Web pages increased dramatically when I started using a palmtop with Web access.