Safari

[anodized]

First of all, I just got an iPhone, so expect noobishness. Anyway, I used to have a blackberry curve. If a website I was visiting had a PDA/Mobile version (light on graphics, etc), the phone would automatically go to that website instead. Safari wants to load the whole damn web page (which takes forever on the EDGE network--no 3g here yet). Is there a way to tell the browser that you want to load the PDA/Mobile version? Some websites don't have links to their mobile sites...they are embedded. Help please, this is really annoying me.

[IphoneTony]

no there is no way to do that.. Most likely you would need to know the mobile web address for that site.. sometimes it starts with m. for example m.yahoo.com

[patrickj]

First of all, I just got an iPhone, so expect noobishness. Anyway, I used to have a blackberry curve. If a website I was visiting had a PDA/Mobile version (light on graphics, etc), the phone would automatically go to that website instead. Safari wants to load the whole damn web page (which takes forever on the EDGE network--no 3g here yet). Is there a way to tell the browser that you want to load the PDA/Mobile version? Some websites don't have links to their mobile sites...they are embedded. Help please, this is really annoying me.

If you prefer the faster loading, 'cutdown' versions of sites, you should check out the Apple Web Apps Directory (http://www.apple.com/webapps/) and appSafari (http://www.appsafari.com/). Don't be mislead by their names - although some of what they list are 'real web apps', a lot of entries are just iPhone optimized sites - so if you do some browsing by category, you may well find some sites that work well for you.

Also, if you have real specific sites you're after, may be worth Googling the site name with the words iPhone site in your search, as tons of sites are producing iPhone optimized versions and you just need to know the URL ...

[Lincoln]

This is the first post I've seen on somebody hunting the mobile version instead of the desktop version. I despise mobile sites...

- John

[dturner]

This is the first post I've seen on somebody hunting the mobile version instead of the desktop version. I despise mobile sites...

- John
I could not agree more. No disrespect to op, but most mobile sites leave so much info out that they lose their original purpose.

[patrickj]

I could not agree more. No disrespect to op, but most mobile sites leave so much info out that they lose their original purpose.

This one's been debated before in other threads - but I've gotta say I think there are a lot of excellent mobile and iPhone optimized sites by now - the Wall Street Journal's site, Hotels.com, Google's various mobile pages, and lots more. I think the best sites should always offer an easy and visible toggle between full and mobile sites, but I really don't think full sites work well all the time - firstly because they can be diabolically slow on Edge connections, and also because having to do a large amount of (horizontal and vertical) scrolling and zooming / panning etc. just to see what you want is tiresome and a waste of time ...