The iPhone obsession

First time I heard Quirksmode curse like a sailor. Regardless, the reason I can't develop for a Nokia, Blackberry, or HTC is because I don't have a Nokia, Blackberry, or HTC. I have an iPhone. It's pretty easy to develop webapps for it because if it looks good in desktop Safari, it will probably look good in iPhone Safari. I don't even know the browsers that other phones have. I know Opera Mini is on many phones and Firefox too. I try to make my sites work well with desktop versions of these browsers. But there's no way I can guarantee that my sites will work well on all the browsers everywhere.

Already I have to worry about: * Firefox 3+ (all OSes) * Safari (OSX, Windows) * Opera 9+ * Chrome 3+ * IE7+ * iPhone

There are just so many browsers I have to worry about. And even though I code for standards, every browser still treats every little thing slightly differently. I realize making something work in Opera if it already works in FF/Chrome is probably not too difficult, but sometimes little things can take up hours. So sorry Quirksmode, despite your well-written article, I will not even bother with any other browsers just because you say so.

You know when I will bother? When my users tell me that my app doesn't work well in platform X, browser Y and they would really want it to. That's when I will go beyond my basic list of browsers. Otherwise I'm just wasting resources developing for yet another platform.

message: don't forget to support the less fortunate phones while developing for the mobile web.

Who are all these people with Nokia's?

I have never met one.

Even in 2000, developers had Netscape Navigator, so developing for IE because they had to and NN because they wanted to was the best option (unless distorted by being paid to meet other requirements).

Now, developers have iPhones and like iphones, developing for other devices isn't so personally pressing.

Perhaps this will force other manufacturers to improve in the way we always wanted to do to IE6 but couldn't?

Nokia, as far as I'm aware, is the biggest cell phone company in the world. Here in China, when I see someone pull out a cell phone, it's a decent bet that it will be a Nokia.