Apple published a detailed page about how to design (and code) your websites for iPhone:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/designingcontent.html

This seems to be a good starting point, even if
- users may not necessarily act like Apple suspects them to do.
- iPhone is just one device besides many other portables.

IMHO this topic should be discussed in the newslist. Thanks for bringing this up.

--
cheers,
Steffen

Well,
i don't think the iphone has or will ever get such a big market share so that we will optimize pages for it.

Besides that, the browser with zoom works very well on the iphone. On my last trip to San Francisco i tried to view my travel blog on it and it worked just great with zoom in and zoom out.

See: http://www.usa-reise-blog.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/san_francisco_5535.jpg
and http://www.usa-reise-blog.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/san_francisco_5536.jpg

@andreas: sounds to me like: nobody needs a computer at home... :-)

did someone tryied to handle the baackend with the iphone?

Hi Oliver,
I had a chance to see the TYPO3 backend on a iPhone. My 2 minutes trial in an Apple Store was OK, but of course I couldn't test a lot.

Hey and the iPhone rocks. I strongly believe it will have a similar impact on the mobile phone industry what the iPod has now in the music industry. I would very much appreciate to see an T3iPhoneBackend. Let's surf on the iPhone marketing wave with TYPO3.

Cheers,
Thomas

I have attempted to make urgent changes via the browser of a Treo 700p. It was truly torture! I barely succeeded in accomplishing a 1 minute task in a brisk 20 minutes! Let's hope that there's a better future for future mobile browsers.

I constantly log into the backend of typo3 with the Nokia E90 to update webpages and it works perfect - almost as if you have a laptop with you! The E90 has an 800px with display and is capable of the HSDPA-Standard, which makes it fast even if no WiFi is available.

The iPhone comes with a display of only 480px width (a little bit more than half!) and is only capable of EDGE. I can not see how this could be fun to work with!
Why does someone want to work with ancient technology only because it has some kind of fruit-logo on its back!?

I totally agree with Gabriels opinion, I used to use a Nokia 9500 for mobile Typo3 changes and recently "upgraded" to the E90. In my opinion, it is just the perfect device that in almost every task may replace a Laptop for changes "on the move".

1. A wonderful brwoser - it displays the bakend as well as the frontend in a estonishing quality and at impressive speed, that is far beyond any other mobile device I know.

2. A full layouted keyboard makes it possible to enter text with ease, not as fast as on a laptop computer but better than on any other mobile device (HTC devices included).

3. It provides the full bunch of mobile connections, including not only WiFi and Bluetooth but also GPRS (EDGE) and UMTS (HSDPA) which always allows you to use the fastest connection available. Especially when the backend has to be completely loaded, this difference in speed really matters.

4. It's an open system, allowing you to install 3rd party software as the putty SSH-Client or a Freeware FTP-Client. This way you cannot only access the backend but also your webserver itself.

5. Real pushmail via IMAP-IDLE, Active Sync or Blackberry is supported by the device, this way you may use it as recipient for status and alert mails from your server, allowing you to react to problems in real time.

For the question about designing pages for the iPhone, I personally would only do this for a site dealing with the iPhone, but looking at market shares, you'd better look for your pages looking good on Symbian and Win Mobile as these do have more tahn 80 % of the mobile market, where as the iPhone is AFAIK still below 1 %.

Yes. The Horse carriage was more comfortable than the first car. :-)

My question was: Do you understand that Web will be available anywhere, no matter if you are holding an iPhone, Nokia or Android Based Device.

I could have waited for the Next generation of the iPhone. But in the mean time i have had lost a lot of opportunities and inspiring thoughts.

Doesnt use the iPhone _the_ internet as I'd use it with a modern browser? At least the commercials here in Germany tell that it's not just a "near the internet" internet... now I wonder why they published coding guidelines for making sites for iPhones.. :/

I check the TYPO3 Backend on my Nokia E65. Screenshots are on my Website ;-)

Looks sweet, but working is hard on it...

It is of course true, that you can use the "real" internet as it is on the iPhone like on no mobile before but many pages are not build to be seen on mobile devices as they are "optimized" for 1024x768 oder use proprietary technologies like Java oder Flash. So the Apple Developer Documents is for writing good and compatible code for the first approach. Another thing is, that (my guess) 95% of all websites do not have a real good usability so it could be stressful to use them if you are in a hurry. So it makes sense to write optimized websites in the case they provide a useful information for the mobile user - like short-range transit timetables, banking, booking, closing times, and so on.
And you are not restricted to websites - think about a inventory application where all employees use a special server application with their iPhones (seen on MacExpo) for example.
This is of course not restricted to the iPhone - but - believe it or not - the iPhone will be *the* catalyst for mobile phone computing in my opinion.