iPhone Optimized Websites On The S60 Browser
We won’t start another war between S60 and OSX here. Everyone knows we are S60 fans, but we always like to look out of the box and take advantage of what’s there. The release of the iPhone pushed a lot of websites to release iPhone optimized versions that look better than the dull mobile sites and are more practical to read on smaller screens than full sites.
A while ago, I wrote about the iPhone optimized version of Google Reader which I still use despite Google releasing an S60 version. I always thought that I should look into more iphone sites, but never had the time until 2 days ago when Matthew Stevens wrote an article about iPhone sites on the Nokia Internet Tablet. Having a handy list of links, I was curious to see how they perform on the S60 browser. All of them rendered well except iPhlickr and Facebook, but I was most excited about the Weather Underground site which works like a charm.
This pushed me to further explore iPhone optimized websites, which led me discover a lot of top lists (see here, here and here) as well as some good gems like:
- Seeqpod : a music search and discovery engine, unfortunately only Popular Artists seem to work on my browser.
- iOlympics : news and schedules from the upcoming Olympics.
- AOL Food Recipe Find : just like the name says, this is a searchable detailed recipe guide.
- Dribbr : a directory of iPhone optimized websites, organized in categories.
Of course not all iphone optimized websites will render well on the S60 browser, but most of them will, so you should explore Dribbr or Apple’s own directory and see if there’s something there that strikes your interest. What do you think of these iPhone optimized sites? Do you like the way they look or perform, or do you prefer the usual mobile sites? Are there any other iPhone sites that you frequently use that you would advise us to explore?
[Bonus Link: on an iPhone related note, Jaganath from Digital Rover has posted a tutorial on how to add your MobileMe address to your S60 email client]
About the google reader, I can no longer find the S60 version. Google.com/reader redirects to the i version on my N95. Not that I dont like it…
Ricky, thanks for the link. Check one of the comments for even more sites collected by the guys on Internettablettalk.com.
I’ve said it many times, I’m so annoyed all these sites are promoted as iphone sites. Yes they are intended for use on the iphone in most cases but let’s face it, the webmasters could do more to make them friendlier to many other devices that support ajax, such as the N95 and N8×0.
Seeqpod does not work on my N82. What phone are you using it on?
Joe, I’m having the same “problem” on my N82 since some weeks ago. One day, the S60 version favorite showed the i version and I can’t see the S60 version anymore. I just supposed they thought the i version works right enough to maintain 2 very similar versions.
[...] Symbian Guru – iPhone optimized websites in S60’s browser [...]
Well as the S60 Browser uses Webkit which is also the case with Safari I wouldn’t exactly be suprised that they did somehting like that, serving only the iPhone optimized version for S60 phones.
When it comes to the rendering of sites I’m not sure who’s at “fault” here. (By e.g. not following standards)
However I understand that there’s need for some “hacks” as there are limitations such as screensize on a handset.
What I’ve experienced though is that some drop-down menus don’t work at all on the S60 browser which is quite frustrating.
(But overall I use the S60 browser more than Opera or Opera Mini)
The website you should be using for Seeqpod is seeqpod.com/nokia.
And it’s better on S60 because you download the files instead of streaming them. :)