Cell, Web Firms Agree on Mobile Website Guidelines

A handful of the world’s top cell phone and Internet firms, including mobile giants Nokia and Vodafone as well as search behemoth Google, have come to an agreement on guidelines for the development of websites to make surfing the Internet via cell phones more simple and effective, Reuters reports.

Most new cell phones come equipped with Web browsers, but a relatively small percentage of mobile phone users actually surf the Internet with their handsets for a variety of reasons, including the fact that most sites aren’t ready for cell phone viewing and they appear fragmented or incomplete on most mobile displays.

The World Wide Web Consortium, a group that works to enhance and increase the Internet’s capabilities, wants to improve the quality of sites viewed via mobile phones, and it’s creating 60 guidelines to speed the process along, Reuters reports.

Within the new guidelines for site developers are suggestions to stay away from very large graphics or pop-up ads that can take up a full cell phone screen, and a recommendation to design sites so that the most relevant content appears at the top of the screen, to avoid excessive and unnecessary scrolling, according to Reuters. 

The guidelines also advise developers to stop using cookies to keep track of Web surfers’ preferences or passwords, and to find another option because cookies don’t work on mobile phones, Reuters reports.

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