Optimizing Your Mobile Web Designs for the iPhone

By Janine Warner, David LaFontaine, and Lee Andron

Part of the iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Yes, the iPhone screen is small, but you should stop thinking about constraints and start focusing on the amazing new opportunities iPhone web design offers — 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 your menu on their iPhones and consider whether to eat there.

When designing a website for the iPhone, remember the following key points:

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

When you create a special design for the iPhone, be sure to include a link back to the desktop version of your website. Visitors to your mobile website 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.