Introducing Our "Mobile Device Friendly" Web Site

Do you know that you can easily "surf" the PocketLearn web site from your mobile phone or PDA?  If you thought you could already do that, you are in part correct, but until recently, it wasn't a good user experience and "easily" certainly did not describe it.  Most web sites, including the regular PocketLearn.com site are barely recognizable when viewed on a mobile device.  Almost as long as the World Wide Web has coexisted with "small device" browsers, the two have been at odds.  Most web sites are designed for the type of browsers that run on desktop computers.  Desktop systems have large screens, fast processors, a keyboard and pointing device, and typically high Internet bandwidth.  This has led to very sophisticated, image-intensive web sites that depend on the virtues of the desktop system.  Compare that to your average web-capable small device (such as a WAP browser) with a tiny screen, no keyboard or pointing device, limited Internet bandwidth, slower processor, etc.  These devices beg for a better browsing experiencing.  One solution is to have a separate, yet "duplicate" web site that is tailored for the smaller devices.  When a browser navigates to the World Wide Web address of such a site, the server first detects the capabilities (such as screen size) of the device.  Based on this information, the server will point the browser to the web site that is the most appropriate for the client browser.

   Home page of the mobile web site

Another, duplicate web site for these small devices is a key element of our plan here at PocketLearn.  Most mobile phone users today, for example, rely on "Over The Air" or "OTA" provisioning as the standard way to obtain software and other content.  Downloading software and PocketLearn titles in this manner from the full web site would be a tedious endeavor and would create a huge barrier to user acceptance of the PocketLearn paradigm.  We have strived to make that a good experience by trimming down the "small device" web site by  leaving out most images, formatting, and unnecessary features of the full web site that don't make sense for a small device.  For example, we have removed such unneeded pages as Title Submission and download of the Title Development Kit (TDK) and Flash Card Studio software.  We have left in the most important elements such as browsing the title categories, viewing title detail, title downloading, viewing articles, and more.  The bottom line is that finding and downloading PocketLearn software and content (titles) is now much easier for the mobile device user.  Note that you will use air time as you browse and download, but because the web site is much "leaner", the airtime and bandwidth usage will be kept to a minimum.