Optimize Web Designs for the iPhone

By Janine Warner, David LaFontaine, and Lee Andron from iPhone and iPad Web Design For Dummies

The iPhone screen is small, but try to stop thinking about constraints and start focusing on the amazing new opportunities — such as attracting an audience of people on the move — people who may be standing right outside your restaurant, for example, while they look at the menu on your website and consider whether to eat there.

Thus a few key points about designing for the iPhone.

Remember that every pixel counts. You don’t have much room to play with, so be sure not to waste a single pixel in your designs.
Create designs with only one column of information for the iPhone. Multicolumn layouts just don't fit well on small screens.

Refer to the figure for a quick comparison of a design that’s optimized for the iPhone versus the iPad.

When you create a special design for the iPhone, be sure to include a link back to the desktop version of your site. Visitors to your mobile site may already be familiar with the desktop version and may prefer to visit the version that’s already familiar to them, even if they’re using an iPhone.

The mobile version of the Safari web browser aims to display any desktop site as well as a desktop computer does, and, with the exception of the smaller screen size, it comes darned close.