blog

One of the things I love about the iPhone is its ability to render any website as if on a desk/lap top computer. When I was responsible for the F1000 website, I was terribly pleased that the new designs just worked (and they still do. I’ll soon be able to give you some good news about that). Other mobile devices didn’t do quite as well, so many, many websites provide mobile stylesheets so that you can access them anyways (although sometimes with a limited feature set, which is annoying).

Apps of course are another way to deliver mobile content, but when your product is a website, that does seem to be a step backwards: apps are platform-dependent, and unless you’re going to offer something that just isn’t available on a website then the added value of offering an app rather than a well-designed website is questionable.

But not everybody has an iPhone, or an HTC, or whatever can render fully featured websites, and they depend on the mobile versions of such sites. The particular kicker for science and education is that this group of disenfranchised are often the very ones we want to reach. So anybody in the business of education, particularly in the developing world, wants to make sure that their content is available on the cheapest and most basic internet devices (as well as being all whizz-bang where appropriate).

Scitable is an initiative from Nature Publishing Group, providing teaching materials written by scientists and collaborative tools to students all over the world