To borrow a phrase from a former co-worker and tech editor of mine, the Mobile Web “sucks dead bunnies”. Unlike other technologists who believe that WAP was a solution looking for a problem, I’m a firm believer that just reformatting Web pages designed to be used on desktop and laptop computers is not sufficient for providing a fully useful Internet experience to PDAs and mobile phones.

What went wrong, and must be fixed to make the Mobile Web happen for more than just those with deep enough pockets to tie themselves in with the carriers? Something very simple called content negotiation. Every WAP browser I have ever tried makes the same fatal error of claiming to support both (X)HTML and WAP in the header they send to Web servers, and not specifying a preference. When visiting a server that is properly configured for content negotiation with both (X)HTML and WAP pages, the server will properly send the higher-quality file–the desktop (X)HTML one–that most mobile phones can’t handle (either in a usable manner or more oftent not at all). This is relevant for anyone involved in the CAD or design markets because of the coming of SVG and location-based services to mobile phones. Before these can be widely deployed though, this fundamental (and extremely easy to fix) flaw must be corrected.

So the acid tests begin now. My latest site, PDAcritic.com, is properly configured with most pages available in both XHTML and WAP versions. All of the content there fully complies with the IETF and W3C standards, so if a desktop browser (sorry, Microsoft) or WAP browser (sorry, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson, et. al.) can’t even load the site, don’t blame me–ditch that browser and go find one that works.

I’ll provide updates as I test browsers, phones, and PDAs for compatibility with this and other technologies of interest to this community. And you’ll know who the winners and losers are, because I’ll be handing out letter grades that won’t pull any punches. Sony Ericsson is the first, and their S710a earned a D−.

I have long been a fan of the Mozilla browser, ever since the Netscape browser nearly died, spinning off the open source Mozilla foundation in the process. Since well before version 1.0, it has been a better browser than Internet Explorer

But the Mozilla Suite will not be developed further. The Mozilla Suite was a hold-over from the days of Netscape communicator, which was focused on being an alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook integrated calendar/E-mail client, and while I and many others loved the integration, it made updating just the browser or just the E-mail features problematic because the whole suite had to be updated, tested, and launched.

With the overwhelming success of the Mozilla Firefox browser—a lean, mean, fighting machine, the Mozilla Foundation developers have decided to put the Suite on life support. Future enhancements will consist of bug fixes, security patches, and perhaps an occasional update of the core rendering engine.

So the main development focus has switched to the stand-alone applications—the Firefox browser, Thunderbird E-mail client, and Sunbird Calendar. There are enough differences in the interface between the integrated suite and the individual applications that I’ll be relearning and lamenting the death of the suite for a little white, but I think the end result will be far better in the end.

In fact, because of the coming integrated support for SVG in version 1.1, I’ll soon be making Firefox the target browser I design this site for. Users of IE and older versions of Mozilla will find some pieces of content missing or duplicated, but it’s time to leave the old browsers in the history books.

Especially for anyone in any of the design industries.