gLog

I think most would agree the BlackBerry has had a significant impact on the way we interact with others. For better or for worse, this little device has enabled a different style of communication. Since being issued one about eight months ago, I now understand how convenient it can be having access to your email and the web from most anywhere. [ Insert obligatory statement about "the corporate tether" here. ]

I remember the first time I saw a website I’d designed being displayed on a BlackBerry. I’d always heard about the perils of not using semantic markup because mobile devices render your pages differently. But seeing this with my own eyes was a little too much for the designer side of me to take. Of course the logical side was pretty happy because I had coded the site using proper markup. Even though none of the design elements were being displayed, all of my content had the proper visual hierarchy.

As you can see, none of the design elements like colors, layout, font faces, or background images survive the rendering process. Just headings, paragraphs, links, lists, and images. It’s also important to note Flash doesn’t make it through either.

Images, as content, do render quite well on the BlackBerry. I’m not sure about the specifics but the device looks to downsample images that are larger than the viewport.

Last but not least, here is an example of on unordered list and a form. Again, none of the design elements are rendered. Just the structure of the list and functionality of the form remain intact.

So there you have it. While it would be great if everyone had iPhones that rendered the web as we’ve designed it, the reality is there are numerous mobile devices people use on a daily basis to access information.

Posted in: Web Design & Development