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3 Reasons Apple’s New iPhone Promotes Better Markup
January 9th, 2007 | by Brett DerricottI have to say I’m completely in love with the Apple iPhone Steve Jobs just announced. I’m sorely regretting my decision to sign a new contract with Verizon Wireless last fall because it means I face a stiff cancellation fee if I want an iPhone (currently only available through Apple’s partnership with Cingular).
Other than the relationship with Cingular (see my rant on the Cingular/AT&T confusion), the iPhone seems perfect. Jobs made some pretty big claims about how the iPhone is as revolutionary as the original Macintosh and the iPod. I’m inclined to believe him.
Even if the iPhone doesn’t turn the mobile phone industry upside down, which it seems poised to do, it will do one great thing in my eyes: further the cause of semantic, standards-based web markup. You already know I think standards and semantic markup are important. The iPhone will help make sure even more people think so too.
Here are 3 reasons the iPhone will further the cause of Web standards and semantic markup.
- The iPhone puts handheld Internet-access in the hands of people other than the usual gadget-heads who’ll put up with a quirky home-grown phone browser. With more of the masses accessing the Web via a handheld device, more clients, designers, and developers are going to be concerned with how a website looks and functions in both traditional and mobile environments.
- The iPhone has a real browser that developers already target: Safari. The “smartphones” on the market today aren’t full-featured browsers and aren’t even on the radar of most web developers in terms of writing code optimized for these browsers.
- The iPhone will spawn a whole slew of imitators just like the iPod did. With the bar effectively raised, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, LG, etc. will all have to step up their game and produce a competing product. That means everyone will be making phones capable of a more robust handheld browsing experience, further increasing the desire of web designers and developers (and their clients) to make websites that look good on all devices.
Semantic markup that adheres to established standards is ideal for websites whose audience will be using a variety of devices. The right markup works flawlessly in a desktop browser, a handheld device’s browser, and even in a screen reader.
Apple’s iPhone brings a new device to the market that will gain market share quickly, promote handheld web browsing, and as a result, increase the value of web standards and semantics!
Comments
Nokia phones allready come with opera9 browser which is also full featured. Its also aviable for Windows Mobile.
I agree with everything you’ve said, but doesn’t the fact that the iPhone uses a fully functioning Safari browser sort of imply that media=”handheld” stylesheets aren’t really necessary if other devices begin to implement real browsers into their devices?
find a place where the phone “roams” – make lots of calls, they will drop you 
Regarding your comment:
“That means everyone will be making phones capable of a more robust handheld browsing experience, further increasing the desire of web designers and developers (and their clients) to make websites that look good on all devices.”
You can’t make a site that will look good on all devices. You can structure your HTML and CSS so that pages render well or adapt well, but if you’ve ever visited Yahoo! or Google on a Treo, for example, you’ll know that they feed a different version of their site to those devices.
Again, it just goes back to the idea of separating structural markup from content.
… hopefully this is what you meant. In which case I agree.
@Kris: I sure hope that doesn’t happen…the last thing we need is a situation where we double the number of hacks we already have to use to work on multiple devices.
@Bill: Yes, with Safari on the iPhone you’d think it’d be possible to eliminate the requirement for a handheld-specific stylesheet. I can still see a desire for a separate stylesheet in some cases just to tailor the content to the smaller viewport.
@Michael: Very true, my friend. I did oversimplify a bit there! With semantic markup controlling the structure and CSS controlling the presentation, designers/developers can tailor the same content for different devices as you’ve pointed out. Thanks.
Or, the knock-off competitor products will end up producing their own browsers (and not using Opera, Safari, Mobile FireFox, etc) which will throw yet MORE types of hacks needed to be used.
That’s what I think will happen, and it saddens me.