Coding Horror talks about Robert Scoble's
"irrational" desire for extreme web site portability.
Sure, I think that support for 17,000 different resolutions is a little
bit nuts; but being able to have a couple of default "mobile" settings
for pages might not be too out of line. This reminds me of when I
used to see "This site is optimized to work with Internet Explorer
only", which in many cases really meant, "Our web designers are
*really* lazy and can't be bothered making this
standards-compliant".
This isn't to say that there sometimes aren't reasons for picking IE,
particularly if you are delivering a specialized web app for limited
sale vs. a content site like IGN or something that will normally be
seen
from many browsers. I would say that having a non-functional
website in Firefox gives a terrible impression most of the time.
Anyone remember the initial Windows Live demo?
I'm not saying that site designers who do not provide a mobile layout
for their users are lazy; but I do think it is something that people
should take into mind more as mobile Internet picks up
speed. Of course, many sites also do a piss-poor job of
being accessible for the disabled; I wish Scoble would start carrying
that torch.