Minimalist Web design lost favor as a design technique back in the early days of Netscape. No matter how many times I have told people that the information is in the text, a picture is not worth 1,000 words on the Web. The "keep it simple" mantra was lost to the world as flashy, blinking, dancing babies took over our Web design universe.

A recent Web Site Journal contains an article on Web site design for PalmPilots, cell phones, and other small devices. It proposes that going back to the days of designing Web pages for text-only browsers like Lynx may be the best alternative. After all these years, it turns out that, in addition to frames being evil (everyone knows they're the spawn of the devil, right?), tables are also bad. The article plugs Cascading Style Sheets as an easier way to solve the problem.

Other resources about this topic are also available. Anybrowser.com has a designing Web site viewer that includes an option to view your site for text-only compatibility.

"In addition to frames being evil (everyone knows they're the spawn of the devil, right?), tables are also bad."

 

For an example of a Web site specifically designed for rapid loading and text-friendliness, take a look at Filmpros, the Arizona Online Film Production Directory, where producers acquire film production resources while working in Arizona. Many of these people use laptop computers to access this site, but in the future they will be just as likely to use their cellular phones, PalmPilots, or other handheld devices.

Now is the time to be thinking about what your pages will look like on a 1.28-inch screen. Motorola recently announced that all of their cell phones will provide Internet access by next year, and Cisco Systems and Motorola have announced a wireless Internet project. Motorola's Piano Project and Sun Microsystems' Jini will make it even easier to connect these devices. Access to the Internet on small devices is going to become ubiquitous soon, and we all need to be designing for it.

Bill Austin is a principal engineer at Motorola in Scottsdale, Arizona, working on Wireless Internet Solutions and Personal Area Networking. Over the past seven years he has been responsible for development and deployment of more than 200,000 Web pages for intranets, extranets, and the Internet. He is currently the President and Webmaster of the AzTeC Computing Free-Net, which provides free Internet access to about 30,000 Arizona residents, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the Arizona Internet Professionals Association.