Scott Gilbertson: ‘The iPhone Is Internet Explorer 4 All Over Again’

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Wired’s Scott Gilbertson writes:

And the more I’ve been thinking about that argument, the more I realize that it’s exactly how Microsoft spun the proprietary, non-standard HTML features in IE 4.

In suggesting that developers use the web to build iPhone applications, what Apple has done (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not) is force the creation of a subset of the mobile web that only works with the iPhone’s unique features — namely the touch-screen interface.

There’s an enormous difference between “built-for-IE4” and “built-for-iPhone” web sites, and Gilbertson himself points it out: the techniques for developing web sites optimized for the iPhone are based on standards. Optimizing for iPhone is, in a way, an accessibility issue.

★ Monday, 20 August 2007